Precise Const Text

INTERPRETING PRECISE CONSTITUTIONAL
TEXT: THE ARGUMENT FOR A NEW

INTERPRETATION OF THE INCOMPATIBILITY
CLAUSE, THE REMOVAL & DISQUALIFICATION
CLAUSE, AND THE RELIGIOUS TEST CLAUSEA
RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR JOSH CHAFETZS
IMPEACHMENT & ASSASSINATION
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN*
I. THE METAPHOR IS THE MESSAGE ........................................ 286

A. Must Senate Conviction Upon Impeachment
Effectuate Removal (Chafetzs Political
Death)? ...................................................................... 295
B. Is it Reasonable to Characterize Removal
in Consequence of Conviction a
Political Death? ...................................................... 298
C. Is Senate Disqualification a Political
Death Without Possibility of Resurrection? .............. 302
II. BUT IS THE PRESIDENCY DIFFERENT? .................................. 308
III. IS THIS RESULT ABSURD? ................................................ 328
IV. THE DANGER OF CHAFETZS WRONG METAPHOR ............... 337
V. A TURN OF THE TIDE ........................................................... 341
VI. AFTERWARD ........................................................................ 352
The language of political death is, of course, metaphoricaland, like
all metaphors, the vehicle does not perfectly fit the tenor. An
impeached, convicted, and disqualified officeholder can still hold state
*
Lecturer of Law, National University of Ireland Maynooth; Adjunct Professor, Rutgers

University School of LawNewark, Spring 2010. I thank my NUIM and Rutgers colleagues
and students; Professors Richard Albert, Kent H. Barnett, Robert W. Bennett, Patricia U.
Bonomi, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Josh Chafetz, Conal Condren, Horst Dippel, Brian C. Kalt,
Forrest McDonald (ret.), Sanford V. Levinson, Buckner F. Melton, Jr., Anne Joseph
OConnell, (the late) J.R. Pole, and Lawrence B. Solum; Woody R. Clermont, Esq., Harry
Evans, Clerk of the Senate, Parliament of Australia (ret.), Adam Gustafson, Esq., Noah
McCormack, Harvard University, Robert G. Natelson, Senior Fellow in Constitutional
Jurisprudence, The Independence Institute, Michael Stern, Esq., and Adam J. White, Esq.
Additionally, I thank Professor Robert A. Destro for allowing me to present this paper to his
constitutional law class at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law; the
seminars participants; and also the many commenters on H-Net Humanities & Social
Sciences Online and Conlawprof for their responses and constant encouragement. All errors
remain mine.
285
286
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[Vol. 61:285
office. . . .
Indeed, an impeached, convicted, and disqualified
officeholder can be elected to Congress. . . . Still, it is the central
contention of this Article that the vehicle (assassination, death) can
shed significant light on the tenor (impeachment).
Josh Chafetzs Impeachment and Assassination (2010)1
I. THE METAPHOR IS THE MESSAGE2
In an article in another journal, Professor Josh Chafetz wrote: [I]mpeachment
maintains the link between removal and death, but attenuates it. . . . Impeachment
is . . . a political deatha President who is impeached and convicted is deprived of
his continued existence as a political officeholder. And, like death, impeachment
and conviction may be permanent.3 In this response, it is my purpose to show that
Chafetzs proposed metaphor does not work and, indeed, that inferences drawn from
this metaphor lead Chafetz far afield from the Constitutions original public
meaning. But before doing so, I think it might be helpful to focus on the mechanics
of House impeachment and Senate trial proceedings as settled by the Constitutions
text and long-standing practice.4
1
Josh Chafetz, Impeachment and Assassination, 95 MINN. L. REV. 347, 351 n.23 (2010);
see also Jay S. Bybee, Who Executes the Executioner? Impeachment, Indictment and Other
Alternatives to Assassination, 2 NEXUS 53 passim (1997); Clifford J. Durr, Hugo L. Black: A
Personal Appraisal, 6 GA. L. REV. 1, 11 (1971) ([T]he objective now was impeachment [of
Black]; the viciousness of some of the attacks seemed a clear incitement to assassination.);
Frederick B. Karl & Marguerite Davis, Impeachment in Florida, 6 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 2, 2
(1978) (explaining that [i]mpeachment is the civilized alternative to assassination . . . .); cf.
Steven G. Calabresi, Response, The Political Question of Presidential Succession, 48 STAN. L.
REV. 155, 155 (1995) ([Presidential succession] rules should minimize any incentive to cause
a double vacancy by assassination, impeachment, or other illegitimate means.); James M.
Shellow, Comment, The Limits of Cross-Examination, 34 SETON HALL L. REV. 317, 388
(2003) (The examples illustrate the consequences of drawing so narrow a circle that
meaningful challenges to methodology are impossible and impeachment devolves into
character assassination. (emphasis added)). This Article is largely a response to Professor
Chafetzs Minnesota Law Review publication. See Chafetz, supra passim. But it also
responds to several recent publications by Professors Steven G. Calabresi and Saikrishna B.
Prakash, and to a student note by David J. Shaw. See, e.g., infra notes 10 (citing Calabresis
publication in PENNumbra), 45 (citing Prakashs publication in the Duke Journal of
Constitutional Law and Public Policy), 102 (citing Shaws student note in the Georgetown
Law Journal).
2
Cf. MARSHALL MCLUHAN, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN 7 (1964)

(opining that [t]he medium is the message).
3
4
Chafetz, supra note 1, at 351.
Here and elsewhere I report the consensus (but by no means universal) view. This
simply means that there is no settled Supreme Court or other federal jurisprudence on-point,
and I instead report the consensus arising from actual practice, or in the absence of practice,
within academia. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 69, at 372 n.* (Alexander Hamilton) (J.R.
Pole ed., 2005) ([I]t is always justifiable to reason from the practice of government till its
propriety has been constitutionally questioned.). Any colloquy between Professor Chafetz
and me requires our taking some (if not most) areas of doctrine as noncontroverted: in each
such case, as far as I know, Professor Chafetzs views fall within the consensus.
2013]
INTERPRETING PRECISE CONSTITUTIONAL TEXT
287
In analyzing impeachment, there are four constitutional provisions that are of

primary interest.
The House Impeachment Clause. The House of Representatives shall
ch[oo]se their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole
Power of Impeachment.5
The Senate Trial Clause. The Senate shall have the sole Power to try
all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath
or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the
Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without
the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.6
The Removal and Disqualification Clause. Judgment in Cases of
Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and
disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit
under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be
liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment,
according to Law.7
The Impeachment Clause. The President, Vice President and all civil
Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on
Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high
Crimes and Misdemeanors.8
The consensus view9 of the Impeachment Clause is that it imposes a textual limit
on impeachment; that is, only Presidents, Vice Presidents, and civil Officers of the
5
U.S. CONST. art. I, 2, cl. 5.
U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 6.
U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 7. I call the disqualification component of this clause the
Disqualification Clause.
8
U.S. CONST. art. II, 4. Other impeachment related provisions include: U.S. CONST.
art. II, 2, cl. 1 (The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for
Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.); U.S. CONST. art. III,
2, cl. 3 (The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury . . . .).
9
See, e.g., AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICAS CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 202 (2005)
(affirming that in America only federal Officers would be subject to impeachment
(emphasis added)); id. at 199 n.* (excluding members of Congress from the reach of the
impeachment power); James E. Pfander, Removing Federal Judges, 74 U. CHI. L. REV. 1227,
1227 n.2 (2007) (Article II specifies the officers subject to impeachment as including the
President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States . . . . (emphasis added));
Saikrishna Prakash & Steven D. Smith, How to Remove a Federal Judge, 116 YALE L.J. 72,
83 n.31 (2006) (asserting that Article II Section 4 lists the officers subject to impeachment
(emphasis added)); id. at 82 (The language in Article I relating to removal itself is
instructiveit reads as a limitation rather than a grant of power to the Senate . . . .).
Compare id. at 84 (A close examination of the text suggests that members of Congress are
not the sorts of civil Officers to which Article IIs impeachment provision applies at
all . . . . (emphasis added)), with id. at 84 n.38 (noting that Article I does recognize that the
branches of Congress will have their own Officers, such as the Speaker of the House but
failing to explain why that does not put member-presiding officers in the scope of the
Impeachment Clause). By contrast, Professor Isenbergh, reading the Impeachment Clause
(perhaps even more) closely, argues that it merely mandates removal in each case where a
listed officeholder (President, Vice President, or civil officer of the United States) is
288
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impeached and convicted, but that it does not restrict the impeachment power to the named
officeholders. In his view, military officers are also impeachable. See Joseph Isenbergh,
Impeachment and Presidential Immunity from Judicial Process, 18 YALE L. & POLY REV. 53,
66 & n.49, 98 & n.207 (1999); see also TIMOTHY FARRAR, MANUAL OF THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 436 (Boston, Little, Brown, and Company 3d ed. rev. 1872)
(The general power of impeachment and trial may extend to others besides civil officers, as
military or naval officers, or even persons not in office, and to other offences than those
expressly requiring a judgment of removal from office . . . .); Charles Pergler, Note, Trial of
Good Behavior of Federal Judges, 29 VA. L. REV. 876, 879 (1943) ([W]e are dealing with a
mandatory requirement, prescribing removal if a civil officer is impeached and convicted of
the offenses . . . .); cf. AMAR, supra at 198-99 (noting that the House could impeach the
President or any other executive or judicial Officer[]but failing to note that, in the
consensus view, impeachment does not apply to military officers (emphasis added)); Prakash
& Smith, supra at 80 n.20 (It is hard to fathom [Tillman addingis it?] why the Constitution
would implicitly grant military officers more secure tenure than their civilian counterparts.).
Although I am sympathetic to (which is not to say I agree with) Isenberghs (old Whig
unreconstructed textualist) reading, one does wonder if Isenbergh understands impeachment to
extend to (current and former) members of Congress or to citizens and private persons who
never took either an oath of (federal or state) office or an oath to uphold the Constitution? Cf.
infra note 42 (collecting authority suggesting that members of Congress are subject to
impeachment and, by implication, to disqualification). For example, Senator Blount was
impeached by the House one day prior to his expulsion by the Senate. See id. (collecting
primary House and Senate documents). But see DAVID E. KYVIG, THE AGE OF IMPEACHMENT:
AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL CULTURE SINCE 1960, at 22 (2008) (The House of
Representatives, not satisfied [with Blounts expulsion by the Senate], impeached the exsenator to disqualify him from further office holding.). The propriety of the Houses action
was, arguably, rejected by the Senate. However, the Senate materials are not absent
ambiguity. See RICHARD D. HUPMAN, SENATE ELECTION, EXPULSION AND CENSURE CASES
FROM 1789 TO 1960, S. DOC. NO. 87-71, at 3 (2d Sess. 1962) (It is not clear whether . . . [the
Senates] refusal to take jurisdiction is to be construed to mean (1) a Senator is not an officer
within the meaning of Art. II, 4 of the Constitution or (2) that a man who has ceased to hold
a civil office is no longer subject to impeachment.); HAROLD H. BRUFF, BALANCE OF
FORCES: SEPARATION OF POWERS LAW IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE 314 n.7 (2006)
(Following th[e] [Blount] case, it became the consensus within Congress that its members
were not officers for purposes of impeachment; rather the expulsion power applied to them.);
JOHN D. FEERICK, FROM FAILING HANDS: THE STORY OF PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION 144 (1965)
(The Senate dismissed the [Blount] case, giving no reason for its decision.); JOHN D.
FEERICK, THE TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT: ITS COMPLETE HISTORY AND EARLIEST
APPLICATIONS 40 n. (1976) ([Blounts] lawyers pleaded lack of [Senate] jurisdiction on the
ground, among others, that a senator was not a civil officer and thus not subject to
impeachment. The Senate dismissed the case, giving no reason for its decision. Since Blount
had been expelled [by the Senate] before the dismissal [of the impeachment proceeding],
another interpretation is that a member of Congress loses his status as a civil officer, and
therefore may not be impeached, after he is expelled from Congress. (emphasis added));
WILLIAM RAWLE, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 214
(Philadelphia, Philip H. Nicklin 2d ed. 1829) (Their deliberations, after the arguments of
counsel, being held in private, we can only infer from those arguments, that the term officers
of the United States, as used in the Constitution, was held by a majority of the senate, not to
include members of the senate, and on the same principle, members of the house of
representatives would also be excluded from this jurisdiction. (emphasis added)); RUTH C.
SILVA, PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION 134 (2d ed. 1968) (The upper House ascribed no reason
for its decision.); 1 JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED
STATES 793, at 559 (Boston, Little, Brown, and Co. 1873) (The reasoning, by which [the
Senates decision in Blount] was sustained in the senate, does not appear, their deliberations
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having been private.); Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, If the Judicial Confirmation Process is

Broken, Can a Statute Fix It?, 85 NEB. L. REV. 960, 1003 n.140 (2007) (I recognize that the
proposition that members of Congress are not subject to impeachment has not always been
completely free from doubt. Early in the nations history the House impeached Senator
William Blount, but the Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment. Although the Senates
action did not necessarily reflect the view that legislators are not impeachable officers, the
incident has come to stand for that view . . . .); Neil Kinkopf, The Scope of High Crimes
and Misdemeanors After the Impeachment of President Clinton, 63 LAW & CONTEMP.
PROBS. 201, 216 (2000) (Because the[] [Senate] deliberated in closed session, there is no
record to establish the grounds on which the Senate granted the dismissal [in Blount].); Laura
Krugman Ray, Discipline Through Delegation: Solving the Problem of Congressional
Housecleaning, 55 U. PITT. L. REV. 389, 399 (1994) (The Senate deliberated in closed
session before deciding that it lacked jurisdiction over the Blount impeachment, and thus the
basis for its decision is unclear. (footnote omitted)); Ruth C. Silva, The Presidential
Succession Act of 1947, 47 MICH. L. REV. 451, 461 (1949) (noting that [t]he Senate ascribed
no reason for its decision); H. Jefferson Powell, The Province and Duty of the Political
Departments, 65 U. CHI. L. REV. 365, 369 (1998) (reviewing DAVID P. CURRIE, THE
CONSTITUTION IN CONGRESS: THE FEDERALIST PERIOD, 1789-1801 (1997)) (explaining that
Currie argued that the conclusion that members of Congress are not officers of the United
States within the meaning of the impeachment provisions may well be right, but it cannot be
proven). But see ELIZABETH B. BAZAN, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., 98-186A, IMPEACHMENT:
AN OVERVIEW OF CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS, PROCEDURE, AND PRACTICE CRS-22 (1998)
(The Senate concluded that [Blount] was not [a civil officer subject to impeachment] and that
it lacked jurisdiction over him for impeachment purposes.); AMAR, supra at 568 n.53
(Structurally, the Constitution provided for expulsion, not impeachment, of rotten federal
lawmakers. And in the impeachment of Senator William Blount in the late 1790s, a majority
of the Senate sitting as a high court of impeachment read the Constitution in just this
way . . . . (emphasis added)); MARTIN B. GOLD, SENATE PROCEDURE AND PRACTICE 164
(2004) (Senator Blount was acquitted when the Senate decided that sitting Senators did not
represent civil officers subject to impeachment proceedings. (emphasis added)); WILLIAM
MCKAY & CHARLES W. JOHNSON, PARLIAMENT & CONGRESS: REPRESENTATION & SCRUTINY IN
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 507 (2010) ([Blounts] impeachment was subsequently
determined inappropriate by the SenateSenate removal by expulsion being the only
available remedy, as a Senator is not a civil officer . . . .); GORDON S. WOOD, THE CREATION
OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-1787, at 523 n.7 (1998) (Blount was acquitted on the
ground that as a senator he was not a civil officer within the meaning of the impeachment
provision of the Constitution.); Letter from Akhil Reed Amar to Stuart Taylor, Jr. (Feb. 4,
1999), in Akhil Reed Amar, On Impeaching Presidents, 28 HOFSTRA L. REV. 291, 323 (1999)
(apparently finding the Blount proceedings free of ambiguity, and explaining that that [the
Senate] decided that Sen. William Blount could not be impeached because, technically, he
was not an executive or judicial officer within the meaning of Article II, Section 4, but
failing to cite any authority or primary documents in support of this view); id. at 327 (same);
Akhil Reed Amar & Vikram David Amar, Is the Presidential Succession Law Constitutional?,
48 STAN. L. REV. 113, 115 & n.13 (1995) (In the William Blount impeachment case in 1798,
the Senate correctly rejected the idea that its members were civil Officers within the
meaning of the Constitution, and thus subject to impeachment. (emphasis added) (citing
Silva, supra passim)). Notably, the Amars never explain why the Senate (which acquitted
Blount) is better authority than the House (which impeached Blount) for the proposition that
members of Congress are outside of the scope of the impeachment power. See also Paolo O.
Celeridad, Note, Convention vs. Coherence: An Alternative Perspective on Philippine
Presidential Succession, 84 PHILIPPINE L.J. 1077, 1085 (2010) ([C]learly impeachment
cannot apply to legislators. (citing Amar & Amar, supra passim)).
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United States10 may be impeached by the House (by a mere majority of those voting,
not counting abstentions, a quorum being present).
Admittedly, I have some doubts as to using Silva as a source. See, e.g., Silva, supra at 452
(If [President Andrew] Johnson had been removed, [Senator and President pro tem] Ben
Wade would have succeeded [Johnson, as no Vice President was in office]; yet Wade was
himself concerned in the conspiracy to impeach Johnson and voted for the removal.
(emphasis added)); see also SILVA, supra at 117 (describingroughly twenty years after
publishing her Michigan Law Review articlethe movement to impeach and remove
President Johnson as merely an alleged Republican conspiracy (emphasis added)); cf. 3
GIDEON WELLES, DIARY OF GIDEON WELLES: SECRETARY OF THE NAVY UNDER LINCOLN AND
JOHNSON 510 (1911) (using language of conspiracy in regard to efforts to convict Johnson);
Ron Smith, Compelled Cost Disclosure of Grass Roots Lobbying Expenses: Necessary
Government Voyeurism or Chilled Political Speech?, 6 KAN. J.L. & PUB. POLY 115, 123 n.37
(1996) (also using language of conspiracy in the context of the Johnson impeachment).
More recent scholarship has suggested that certain Senators voted to acquit Johnson for less
than wholesome, if not illegal, reasons. See, e.g., id. at n.37 (arguing that although Kansas
Senator Edmund G. Rosscelebrated in John F. Kennedys Profiles in Courage (1956)
may have favored impeachment of Johnson [he] changed his mind at the last minute when he
discovered the other Kansas Senator, Samuel Pomeroy, a Wade supporter, was conspiring so
when Wade became President, all of Ross appointees would be fired (emphasis added)); see
also, e.g., DAVID O. STEWART, IMPEACHED: THE TRIAL OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON AND
THE FIGHT FOR LINCOLNS LEGACY 294-99 (2009) (concluding that it is more likely than not
that some Republican Senators who voted to acquit Johnson had been bribed).
10
The phrase Officers of the United States as used in the Impeachment Clause appears
to be coextensive with the identical phrase which appears in the Appointments Clause and
Inferior Office Appointments Clause. See U.S. CONST. art. II, 2, cl. 2 ([The President] . . .
shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint
Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other
Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and
which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of
such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in
the Heads of Departments. (emphasis added)). This phrase is understood to refer generally to
officers appointed to statutory offices in the Executive Branch and in the Judicial Branch.
Thus, it would appear that neither the President nor Vice President fall within the category of
officers of the United States. See, e.g., United States v. Germaine, 99 U.S. 508, 510 (1878)
(Miller, J.) (That all persons who can be said to hold an office under the government about to
be established under the Constitution [of 1787] were intended to be included within one or the
other of these modes of appointment [i.e., Appointments Clause or Inferior Office
Appointments Clause] there can be but little doubt . . . . It is therefore not to be supposed that
Congress, when enacting a criminal law for the punishment of officers of the United States,
intended to punish anyone not appointed in one of those modes. (emphasis added)); United
States v. Mouat, 124 U.S. 303, 307 (1888) (Miller, J.) (Unless a person in the service of the
Government, therefore holds his place by virtue of an appointment by the President, or of one
of the courts of justice or heads of Departments authorized by law to make such an
appointment, he is not strictly speaking, an officer of the United States. (emphasis added));
see also, e.g., Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3155
(2010) (Roberts, C.J.) (The diffusion of power carries with it a diffusion of accountability.
The people do not vote for the Officers of the United States. Art. II, 2, cl. 2. They instead
look to the President [Tillman addingwho is elected] to guide the assistants or deputies . . .
subject to his superintendence. The Federalist No. 72, p.487 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (A.
Hamilton). Without a clear and effective chain of command, the public cannot determine on
whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures
ought really to fall. Id., No. 70, at 476 (same). That is why the Framers sought to ensure that
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those who are employed in the execution of the law will be in their proper situation, and the
chain of dependence be preserved; the lowest officers, the middle grade [officers], and the
highest [officers], will depend, as they ought, on the President, and the President on the
community. 1 Annals of Cong., at 499 (J. Madison). (emphasis added)); FRANK J.
GOODNOW, THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE LAW OF THE UNITED STATES 225 (Law
Book Exch., Ltd., photo. reprint 2003) (1905) ([T]he United States Supreme Court has held
that no one can be an officer of the United States government unless he be appointed as the
constitution provides, viz., by the President and Senate, the President alone, one of the United
States courts, or the head of an executive department. (emphasis added)); JOHN E. NOWAK &
RONALD D. ROTUNDA, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 7.12(a), at 314 (8th ed. 2010) (The U.S.
Constitution specifically authorizes the President to appoint all other Officers of the United
States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be
established by Law . . . . (quoting the Appointments Clause)); SILVA, supra note 9, at 135
(The courts have been especially careful not to enlarge the meaning of the term officer as
used in the Constitution. They have defined an officer of the United States as a person
appointed by the President and the Senate, by the President alone, by the courts of law, or by a
department head. (collecting case law)); RUTH C. SILVA, PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION 149
(1951) (Officers of the United States are not appointed by electoral colleges. They are
appointed by the President and Senate, by the President alone, by the department heads, or by
the courts of law.); J. Todd Applegate, Chapter 19 of the NAFTA: Are Binational Panels
Constitutional?, 3 NAFTA: LAW & BUS. REV. OF THE AMERICAS 129, 140 (1997) (Exactly
who is an Officer of the United States is a question that was addressed by the U.S. Supreme
Court in a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo. The Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo interpreted
the Appointments Clause to mean that individuals who exercise significant authority pursuant
to the law of the United States must be appointed by the President, with the confirmation of
the Senate [Tillman addingwhich would seem to exclude the President]. (footnote
omitted)); Victoria Nourse & John P. Figura, Toward a Representational Theory of the
Executive, 91 B.U. L. REV. 273, 302 (2011) (reviewing STEVEN G. CALABRESI & CHRISTOPHER
S. YOO, THE UNITARY EXECUTIVE: PRESIDENTIAL POWER FROM WASHINGTON TO BUSH (2008))
(We should read [Chief] Justice Robertss reference to the community [in Free Enter.
Fund, 130 S. Ct. at 3155] as a reminder that what really matters in any inquiry of executive
power is the power of the peoplefor it is only through the Constitutions connection of
executive power to the power of the electorate that the President has any power at all.
(emphasis added)); Silva, supra note 9, at 462 (The courts have been especially careful not to
enlarge the meaning of the term []officer[] as used in the Constitution. They have defined an
officer of the United States as a person appointed by the President and the Senate, by the
President alone, by the courts, or by a department head, and commissioned by the President.
(collecting case law)); id. at 475 ([T]he only election by presidential electors known in the
Constitution is the election of the President and Vice President. Officers of the United
States are appointed by the President and the Senate, by the President alone, by the
department heads, or by the courts. (emphasis added)); cf., e.g., Michael R. Keefe, Note, The
Constitutionality of the Double For-Cause Removal Restriction: Free Enterprise Fund v.
Public Company Accounting Board, 537 F.3D 667 (D.C. Cir. 2008), 77 U. CIN. L. REV. 1653,
1656-57 (2009) ([A]ll officerswhether principal or inferiormust be appointed by the
president, the courts, or the heads of department.). But see 4 THE DEBATES IN THE SEVERAL
STATE CONVENTIONS ON THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION AS RECOMMENDED BY
THE GENERAL CONVENTION AT PHILADELPHIA IN 1787, at 26 (Jonathan Elliot ed., Washington,
no publisher 1836) [hereinafter ELLIOTS DEBATES] (Some other gentlemen said . . . that the
Vice-President was not a member of the Senate, but an officer of the United States, and yet
had a legislative power . . . . (reporting July 24, 1788 meeting of the North Carolina ratifying
convention) (emphasis added)); but cf. BAZAN, supra note 9, at CRS-22 (The term [civil
Officers of the United States] is not defined in the Constitution.); MICHAEL J. GERHARDT,
THE FEDERAL IMPEACHMENT PROCESS: A CONSTITUTIONAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS 64 (2d
ed. 2000) (The text does not define officers of the United States.); Gary Lawson, The
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The Removal and Disqualification Clause provides for two distinct punishments
in consequence of Senate conviction. If an impeached office-holder is convicted by
the Senate (by a vote of two thirds of the Senators present, a quorum being present),
he is automatically removed from office.11 If the Senate convicts, the Senate may,12
Principal Reason Why the PCAOB is Unconstitutional, 62 VAND. L. REV. EN BANC 73, 77
n.13 (2009) (I do not address the thorny question whether congressional officers are Officers
of the United States under the Appointments Clause or for other purposes. (emphasis
added)).
Nevertheless, modern scholars in the academic consensus would also include the President
and Vice President in the category of officer of the United States. See, e.g., Calabresi,
Response, Political Question, supra note 1, at 159 n.24 (The best reading is that the President
and the Vice President are the Officers of the United States contemplated by this language in
the Appointments Clause.); id. at 165-66 (suggesting that a normal President, unlike an
Acting President, is an Officer of the United States); see also, e.g., Amar & Amar, supra
note 9, at 136 n.143 (If an acting President, wielding the full and awesome executive power
of the United States, is not an Officer of the United States, what is he?); cf. 3 ANNALS OF
CONG. 281 (1791) (Congressman Gerry: [I]f [the Speaker] is not an officer [for Succession
Clause purposes], what is he?) (published 1849); 29 ANNALS OF CONG. 947 (1816) (quoting
John Randolph of Roanokes asking rhetorically [i]f the appointment in question [to a treatycreated office] be not an office, he said he should like to know what an office is.) (published
1854). Compare U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 3 ([A]ll executive and judicial Officers, both of the
United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this
Constitution . . . .), with Stephen G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause
Apply to the President?, in Seth Barrett Tillman & Steven G. Calabresi, Debate, The Great
Divorce: The Current Understanding of Separation of Powers and the Original Meaning of
the Incompatibility Clause, 157 U. PA. L. REV. PENNUMBRA 134, 143-44 (2008) (Thus when
the Oath Clause of Article VI requires that all federal and state executive and judicial officers
take oaths to uphold the Constitution the Clause is clearly referring to the President, the Vice
President and to state governors as well as to all federal and state judges.). As explained, the
position of the modern scholars within the academic consensus has been rejected by the
Supreme Court of the United States. But those in the consensus have made no effort to
explain how the Supreme Courts long enduring view on this subject errs. Whether or not the
President and Vice President fall within the category of Officers of the United States (or, the
related category of Officers under the United States), is, as I hope to show, no mere
infructuous quodlibet. See, e.g., infra notes 13 (discussing Officers . . . under the United
States), 48 (distinguishing officers of the United States from Officers . . . under the United
States), 67 (summarizing argument and evidence tending to establish that the President and
Vice President are neither officers of the United States nor Officers . . . under the United
States).
11
This understanding (arguably) arises directly from the text. See supra note 8; see also
supra notes 5-7; GOLD, supra note 9, at 163 (quoting Congressional Research Service report
stating that [t]he precedents in impeachment suggest that removal can flow automatically
from conviction); Peter M. Shane, Who May Discipline or Remove Federal Judges? A
Constitutional Analysis, 142 U. PA. L. REV. 209, 209 n.2 (1993) (As interpreted by the
Senate, this provision requires removal from office as an automatic consequence of
conviction, but disqualification from office requires a separate vote.). However, historically,
Senate practice on this point has been uneven, and, on occasion, the Senate has taken a
separate vote in regard to removal after having voted to convict. See, e.g., The United States
vs. West H. Humphreys, in 54 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
895, 897-904 (Washington, Government Printing Office 1861) (reporting separate Senate
conviction, removal, and disqualification votes taken on June 26, 1862); GERHARDT, supra
note 10, at 187 (noting that in earlier impeachment trials . . . the Senate took separate votes
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293
on guilt and removal). Compare, e.g., Robert H. Bork, Read the Constitution: Its Removal
or Nothing, WALL ST. J., Feb. 1, 1999, at 21A (asserting that [t]he sole historical example of
two votes in the Senate was the 1804 conviction and removal from office of district court
judge John Pickering. . . . What is significant, however, is that . . . there have never been
separate votes on conviction and removal since.), with Robert H. Bork, Letter to the Editor,
Desperate Action in 1804 Impeachment, WALL ST. J., Feb. 10, 1999, at 23A (retreating from
his February 1, 1999 position, supra, and stating, instead, I know of no instance, whether on
one vote or two, in which conviction did not result in removal from office, as the Constitution
states it must).
12
See THE FEDERALIST NO. 65 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 351 (The
punishment, which may [Tillman addingas a matter of discretion] be the consequence of
conviction upon impeachment [Tillman addingwhich appears to refer to disqualification],
is not to terminate the chastisement of the offender. After having been sentenced to a
perpetual ostracism [Tillman addingagain in apparent reference to disqualification] from
the esteem and confidence, and honors and emoluments of his country; he will still be liable to
prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. (emphasis added)); THE
FEDERALIST NO. 79 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 420 ([Article III judges] are liable
to be impeached for mal-conduct by the house of representatives, and tried by the senate, and
if convicted, may be dismissed from office and disqualified for holding any other. (emphasis
added)). But see Ingram v. Shumway, 164 Ariz. 514, 518 (1990) (Feldman, V.C.J.)
(Hamiltons dissertations [in Federalist Nos. 65 & 66] are far from clear on the precise
question before us, though it can certainly be inferred that he may have considered
disqualification to automatically follow impeachment and removal. . . . We are left with the
conclusion that Hamilton may have thought disqualification was automatic [in the case of
conviction], but no record exists that he ever stated this in so many words.); but cf. Nixon v.
United States, 938 F.2d 239, 252 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (Edwards, J., dissenting in part and
concurring in the judgment) (suggesting that like removal, disqualification is mandatory upon
conviction by noting that [t]he injury [Judge] Nixon alleges as a result of his removal [by the
Senate] goes far beyond the loss of his salary. It includes not only removal from the federal
bench, but permanent disqualification from holding Government office. (citing Article I,
Section 3, Clause 7)), affd, 506 U.S. 224 (1993).
Over the course of American history, the Senate has disqualified all of three officers: West
Hughes Humphreys, a federal district court judge, was impeached, convicted, and disqualified
in 1862 for taking a confederate judgeship (without having resigned from his federal judicial
position); Robert Wodrow Archbald, a federal circuit court judge, was impeached, convicted,
and disqualified in 1913 for corruption in office; and, on December 8, 2010, Judge Thomas
Porteous, a federal district court judge, was impeached, convicted, and disqualified for
corruption. See The United States vs. West H. Humphreys, in 54 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, supra note 11, at 904 (reporting a June 26, 1862 unanimous
Senate vote disqualifying Humphreys); Henry J. Abraham, The Pillars and Politics of Judicial
Independence in the United States, in JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN THE AGE OF DEMOCRACY 27
(Peter H. Russell & David M. OBrien eds., 2001) (noting that in 1913 Judge Archbald was
disqualified by a 39-to-35 vote); GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 60 (noting in a 2000 publication
that the only officers ever disqualified by the Senate were Judges Archbald and Humphreys);
KYVIG, supra note 9, at 25 (explaining the Humphreys proceedings); U.S. Senate Roll Call
Votes 111th Congress2nd Session, U.S. SENATE, http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/
roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00265 (last visited
Dec. 29, 2010) (noting that Judge Porteous was disqualified in a 94 to 2 Senate vote).
Notably, Archbald was disqualified by a simple majority, not a two-thirds, vote. See
Waggoner v. Hastings, 816 F. Supp. 716, 719-20 (S.D. Fla. 1993) (Roettger, J.) (citing the
Senate Archbald disqualification proceedings approvingly). It seems somewhat odd that the
(arguably) greater punishment of disqualification may be imposed by a smaller majority (i.e.,
a simple majority vote) than the (arguably) lesser sentence and punishment of conviction with
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in its discretion, by simple majority vote (again, a quorum being present), also
impose an additional punishment: disqualification from holding any Office of honor,
Trust or Profit under the United States.13
concomitant removal, requiring a two-thirds vote. See, e.g., Joel B. Grossman & David A.
Yalof, The Day After: Do We Need a Twenty-Eighth Amendment?, 17 CONST. COMM. 7, 12
(2000) ([Disqualification by the Senate] is now routinely [! & ?] done by majority vote; we
would require a two-thirds vote.); see also State v. Hill, 55 N.W. 794, 796 (Neb. 1893)
(Norval, J.) (stating that [a]ll will concede that disqualification to hold office is a punishment
much greater than removal); cf. Michael Abramowicz, Impeaching Judges at the Fringe, 106
YALE L.J. 2293, 2297-98 (1997) (reviewing MICHAEL J. GERHARDT, THE FEDERAL
IMPEACHMENT PROCESS: A CONSTITUTIONAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS (1996)) (arguing that
[i]f a statute may effectively disqualify judges automatically upon criminal conviction, it
should be able to remove judges as well which suggests that disqualification is a greater
punishment than removal). But see Chandler v. Judicial Council of 10th Cir. of the U.S., 398
U.S. 74, 141-42 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting) (While judges, like other people, can be tried,
convicted, and punished for crimes, no word, phrase, clause, sentence, or even the
Constitution taken as a whole, gives any indication that any judge was ever to be partly
disqualified or wholly removed from office except by the admittedly difficult method of
impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate.
(emphasis added)); GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 94-95 (noting that one of the specific
safeguards set forth in the Constitution for the disqualification of federal judges is that at least
two-thirds of senators must agree on the propriety of a conviction and the imposition of such a
penaltyleaving unclear if penalty refers to second-in-time disqualification or mere
first-in-time conviction); but cf. AMAR, supra note 9, at 567 n.52 (asserting, in 2005, prior to
the 2010 Porteous disqualification, that [t]wice in American history, the Senate has imposed
disqualification . . . by a simple majority vote . . . . (citing GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 7779)). Professor Amar does not appear to be correct: although Judge Archbald was disqualified
by a narrow majority, Judge Humphreys was disqualified by an unanimous vote. See
Abraham, supra at 27 (reporting conviction and disqualification votes for Archbald and
Humphreys).
13
The phrase Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States within the
Removal and Disqualification Clause is textually distinguishable from Office[] of the United
States within the Appointments Clause and Impeachment Clause. See Application of the
[Foreign] Emoluments Clause of the Constitution and the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act,
6 Op. O.L.C. 156, 157 (1982) (Shanks, Depy Asst. Atty Gen.) (It is not clear, however, that
the words any Office of Profit or Trust [under the United States], as used in [Article I,
Section 9, Clause 8] the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause, should be limited to persons
considered Officers under [Article II, Section 2, Clause 2] the Appointments Clause. Both
the language and the purpose of the two provisions are significantly different. (emphasis
added)). See generally Sykes v Cleary (1992) 176 CLR 77, 95 (Austl.) (Mason, C.J., Toohey
& McHugh, JJ.) (The meaning of the expression office of profit under the Crown is
obscure.); 3 CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT 8 (Andrew C. McLaughlin & Albert
Bushnell Hart eds., N.Y., Peter Smith 1963) (1914) (The question of what is an office of trust
or profit under the United States, has never been completely settled. (emphasis added));
MICHAEL J. GLENNON, WHEN NO MAJORITY RULES: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND
PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION 23 (1992) (What constitutes an office of trust or profit is not
clear.); RAWLE, supra note 9, at 217 (The judgment [of the Senate] is of a limited and
peculiar natureit extends no further than to removal from office, and disqualification to
hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit, under the United States. (emphasis
added)); Gerald S. Schatz, Note, Federal Advisory Committees, Foreign Conflicts of Interest,
the Constitution, and Dr. Franklins Snuff Box, 2 D.C. L. REV. 141, 158 (1993) (The
Supreme Court never has ruled on the question of what constitutes an Office of Profit or
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295
A. Must Senate Conviction Upon Impeachment Effectuate Removal (Chafetzs

Political Death)?
No. Senate conviction (founded on a prior House impeachment), standing apart
from a subsequent Senate disqualification vote, works a removal from office only if
the party convicted is still in office at the time the Senate votes to convict. And like
most within the modern academic consensus, Professor Chafetz takes the view that
so-called late impeachment (of former officers)that is, the House impeachment,
Senate trial, conviction, and possible disqualification of former officers based upon
their conduct while in officeis constitutional.14 If House impeachment or Senate
Trust under th[e] [Emoluments] [C]lause.). Notwithstanding the Constitutions textual
distinction, and the lack of consensus among prior commentators, Professor Chafetz, like
Professor Akhil Amar and many other scholars within the (anti-textual) modern academic
consensus, appears to believe that the two phrases are coextensive. See JOSH CHAFETZ,
DEMOCRACYS PRIVILEGED FEW: LEGISLATIVE PRIVILEGE AND DEMOCRATIC NORMS IN THE
BRITISH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS 168 & n.68, 280-81 (2007); see also GOLD, supra
note 9, at 163 (assuming an identity between Offices of honor, trust, or profit under the United
States and offices of public trust under the United Statesnotwithstanding that the latter
phrase nowhere appears in the Constitution). My position is that the Constitution makes use
of textually distinct office-laden language because a different meaning was intended and was
so understood by contemporaries during and in the aftermath of ratification. See supra note 10
(discussing officers of the United States), infra notes 48 (distinguishing officers of the United
States from Officers . . . under the United States), 67 (summarizing argument and evidence
tending to establish that the President and Vice President are neither officers of the United
States nor Officers . . . under the United States).
14
See Josh Chafetz, Executive Branch Contempt of Congress, 76 U. CHI. L. REV. 1083,
1152 (2009) (Even former executive branch officials may be impeached . . . .). Admittedly,
the late impeachment scenario (that is, the House impeachment, Senate trial, conviction,
removal, and possible disqualification of former officers based upon their conduct while in
office) is somewhat theoretical: although the House has impeached a former cabinet member,
Secretary of War William Belknap, the Senate has never purported to convict a former
officeholder. As a result, there is no settled federal practice or jurisprudence on this point, but
the academic consensusincluding Professor Chafetzappears to support so-called late
impeachment. See id.; BRIAN C. KALT, CONSTITUTIONAL CLIFFHANGERS: A LEGAL GUIDE FOR
PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ENEMIES 110 n.*, 113, 122, 126-29, 168 n.* (2012) (discussing lateimpeachment concept, and Belknaps impeachment by the House, which occurred after he had
left office); id. at 106-32 (dedicating an entire chapter to discussing pros and cons of late
impeachment); Brian C. Kalt, The Constitutional Case for the Impeachability of Former
Federal Officials: An Analysis of the Law, History, and Practice of Late Impeachment, 6 TEX.
REV. L. & POL. 13 (2001); see also Michael J. Broyde & Robert A. Schapiro, Impeachment
and Accountability: The Case of the First Lady, 15 CONST. COMM. 479, 490 (1998) (Scholars
today generally agree that in principle former officials are subject to impeachment.). But see
Laurent Sacharoff, Former Presidents and Executive Privilege, 88 TEX. L. REV. 301, 315
(2009) ([Congress] cannot impeach a former President . . . .); but cf. RICHARD A. POSNER,
AN AFFAIR OF STATE: THE INVESTIGATION, IMPEACHMENT, AND TRIAL OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
101 n.21 (1999) ([I]t is unclear whether resignation moots an impeachment
proceeding . . . .).
Professor Akhil Amar appears to be in the camp supporting the permissibility of late
impeachment. See AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICAS UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION 573 n.5 (2012)
(explaining that former officers are also arguably subject to impeachment); AMAR, supra
note 9, at 568 n.53 (Perhaps impeachment could properly extend to former officers who
should be disqualified from future officeholding . . . . (emphasis in the original)); Akhil Reed
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trial proceedings start after the Chief Magistrate or Vice President or officer has
already left office or if the office-holder resigns during House impeachment or
Senate trial proceedings but prior to conviction, then conviction (standing alone and
apart from disqualification) does not (and, indeed, cannot) work a removal, and, at
most, may result in the loss of the statutory perquisites that accrue to former officeholders (e.g., pensions, etc.).15
Amar, Attainder and Amendment 2: Romers Rightness, 95 MICH. L. REV. 203, 214 n.36
(1996) (Even after he left office, Richard Nixon was probably subject to impeachment and
disqualification from future officeholding . . . .); cf. Hearing Before the Task Force on
Judicial Impeachment of the [H.] Comm. on the Judiciary: To Consider Possible
Impeachment of United States District Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. (Part IV), 111th Cong.
17 (Dec. 15, 2009) (testimony of Akhil Amar: [I]t is a gross mistake to believe that [f]ederal
officers may be impeached only for misconduct committed while in office or, even more
strictly, for misconduct that they committed in their capacity as [f]ederal officers.); id at 21
(reproducing Professor Amars prepared statement where he argued that treason and
bribery . . . can be committed by someone prior to taking office, yet remain impeachable
offenses). Professor Amars position here is quite puzzling. If impeachment extends to
former officers (notwithstanding the office-laden language of the Impeachment Clause), then
why are not former officers proper candidates for statutory succession under the Presidential
Succession Clause (another clause using the language of office and officer)? See U.S. CONST.
art. II, 1, cl. 6 (In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death,
Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall
devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of
Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring
what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the
Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. (emphasis added)). Professor Amar
has expressly rejected this possibility. See AMAR, supra note 9, at 171 (Yet once [the Senate
President pro tem or Speaker] resigned [guided by separation of powers concerns], the exlegislative leader would no longer even be a congressional officer.); Amar & Amar, supra
note 9, at 120 ([T]he moment an officer resigns, he becomes a mere citizen and is thus
ineligible to succeed to or remain in the Oval Office [under any succession statute].); cf.
Akhil Reed Amar, A Few Thoughts on Constitutionalism, Textualism, and Populism, 65
FORDHAM L. REV. 1657, 1660 (1997) (If Newt Gingrich is an officer because he is Speaker of
the House, were he to take up the presidency, he would have to step down from the
speakership. But then he would no longer be the officer that was the basis for his
ascension.). What accounts for the distinction Professor Amar would have us make? What
is the difference between current and former officers for the purposes of the Succession
Clause and the Impeachment Clause? Both clauses speak to officers.
15
I suggest that removal may at most result in the loss of statutory perquisites of office.
There is, however, some doubt on this point. Some commentators point out that the loss of
such perquisites appears to be in tension with the Removal and Disqualification Clause, which
provides that Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal
from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under
the United States. U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 7 (emphasis added). Authorities noting this
tension include Professors Gerhardt, Kalt, Samahon, etc. See, e.g., GERHARDT, supra note 10,
at 99 (noting possible loss of pension); Hugh Brown, A Plague on Both Your Houses:
Challenges to the Role of the Independent Counsel in a Presidential Impeachment, 34 TULSA
L.J. 579, 586 (1999) (A removed President can lose not only the office of the presidency and
the right to hold future political positions, but also pension benefits and Secret Service
protection.); Michael J. Gerhardt, The Constitutional Limits to Impeachment and Its
Alternatives, 68 TEX. L. REV. 1, 72 (1989) (Removal results in the permanent loss of the
judges power to decide cases or controversies and the forfeiture of any pension, benefits, and
opportunity to serve on judicially related panels such as the Judicial Council.); Kalt, supra
2013]
297
The bottom line is that impeachment, even of Presidents, may, but need not,
result in removal. That is some reason to believe that Chafetzs metaphor does not
meaningfully explain or account for the constitutional processes relating to
impeachment.
This is no mere minor point at the theoretical boundary of the law. The core of
Professor Chafetzs normative position is that the substantive standard for
impeachment of Presidents is connected to the paradigmatic cases of historically
justified assassinations as understood by Benjamin Franklin, the Framers and
Ratifiers, and their generation.16 Such cases include Charles I17 and Julius
Caesar18men who undermined their (relatively) free domestic political institutions
note 14, at 124 (It was assumed by some of these same commentators that an impeachment
conviction would allow Congress to strip [President] Nixon of his pension, but it now seems
that this would have violated the constitutional limitation on judgments to removal and
disqualification. In retrospect, Congress could have taken steps to allow late impeachment to
strip an ex-officer of his pension, but it was probably too late to apply such a law to Nixon.
(footnotes omitted)); id. at 129-30 (collecting authorities); Tuan Samahon, Impeachment as
Judicial Selection?, 18 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 595, 643 n.315 (2010) (citing GERHARDT,
supra note 12, at 99, approvingly); Alexa J. Smith, Federal Judicial Impeachment: Defining
Process Due, 46 HASTINGS L.J. 639, 657 n.121 (1995) (An impeachment conviction results
in expulsion from the judiciary and the subsequent loss of salary, pensions, and other benefits
ordinarily due.). See generally KALT, supra note 14, at 110-11 ([Senator] Specter indicated
that if convicted, Clinton could lose things like his pension and his government-provided
security. Specter was not quite right; [a] federal . . . [statute] provides that a president who is
impeached and convicted loses his pension and other benefits, but only if he is impeached
while in office. Congress could always change that law, though. In doing so, it would protect
the country from malfeasant officers who commit their offenses shortly before leaving office,
and it would add teeth to late impeachment, thereby making it more likely to be a worthwhile
exercise.); id. at 111 n.7 (One could argue that making the punishment on conviction
include such a severe financial penalty would violate the constitutional provision that
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and
disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United
States. If this is true, however, it makes the current presidential benefits . . . [statute]
unconstitutional as well. But the benefits law operates independently of the impeachment
processloss of the pension would be based on the operation of the pension law, not on the
judgment of the Senate in the impeachment case.).
Some academic discussion relating to pensions relates merely to the loss of the opportunity to
vest in a pension in connection with continuing service, as opposed to the forfeiture of a
pension which has already accrued to the claimant. Furthermore, where the statutory
provision for the loss of perquisites in connection with conviction in impeachment
proceedings is enacted after the close of impeachment proceedings, or after the pension or
other statutory right has vested in the claimant, or after the accused wrongdoer commits the
alleged wrong, there may be implications arising under the Due Process Clause, the Ex Post
Facto Clause, and/or the Bill of Attainder Clause. See U.S. CONST. art. I, 9, cl. 3 (No Bill
of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.); U.S. CONST. amend. V (No person
shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .).
16
See, e.g., Chafetz, supra note 1, at 352.
17
See id. at 367-88. Charles I was not actually assassinated; rather, he was tried,
convicted, and executed by an irregular court. Id.
18
See id. at 353-67.
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in an effort to entrench19 and aggrandize20 their personal power. But men who allow
themselves to be turned out of office or who peaceably resign never deserve to be
assassinated, particularly under any aggrandizement or entrenchment rationale.
Again, Chafetz affirms, as a matter of original public meaning, that late
impeachment is constitutional; he also affirms that the substantive standard for
impeachment is the commission of an assassinable offense (as historically
understood at the time of ratification). Is it not fair to say that these two positions
are (at the very least) in deep tension?
B. Is it Reasonable to Characterize Removal in Consequence of Conviction a
Political Death?
No. When the Senate votes to convict an impeached office-holder, the legal
effect of Senate conviction, automatic removal from office, if in office,21 is
indistinguishable from removals achieved by other means. Examples are readily at
hand. When a Presidents second term ends, or when the public fails to reelect a first
term President, he can no longer exercise the powers and duties of office (its trust);
he can no longer enjoy its perquisites (its profits); he is no longer saluted as the
Chief Magistrate (its honors). The end of the period for which he is elected is
legally and functionally indistinguishable from removal in consequence of
convictionindistinguishable in all respects, except for the timing.
Likewise, the result of a Senate conviction vote is no different from removal of
Executive Branch officers effectuated by the President under his historical Article II
powers. Similarly, an officer may sometimes be removed by another officer (or
commission) acting under a statutory or regulatory grant of authority. Furthermore,
19
See id. at 422 (noting anti-entrenchment rationale for impeachment).
20
See id. at 353 (tying assassination to the aggrandizement rationale).
21
Even if in office, it seems to me that an impeached and convicted office-holder must be

in an office that is itself subject to impeachment in order to be seised by automatic removal at
the time of conviction. For example, a civil officer (e.g., a cabinet member) might be
appointed to high military office. If while in military office he is impeached and convicted for
his prior conduct committed while in civilian office, would that work a removal from military
office? I think not. The effect of House impeachment and Senate conviction would be limited
to its moral opprobrium and to the loss of collateral statutory benefits accruing to former
office-holders subsequently convicted by the Senate. Cf. 3 U.S.C. 19 (2006) (removing
impeached officers from the line of succession, even if not yet convicted). After all, the
Impeachment Clause does not expressly reach Representatives, Senators, and military officers.
See Chafetz, supra note 1, at 351 n.23. But cf. infra note 42 (collecting sources indicating that
members of Congress are impeachable). Thus, it is difficult to see why conviction should
work a removal from such offices. On the other hand, if the House votes to impeach, and the
Senate votes to convict, remove, and disqualify, based on conduct in a formerly held office
subject to impeachment, then disqualification would extend to military office, but not to
Senate or House membership. In other words, although a simple conviction would not
effectuate a removal from military office, disqualification, quite possibly, may do so,
assuming that disqualification reaches offices currently held, and not merely would-be
attempts at future (i.e., post-Senate-conviction) office-holding. If Professor Chafetz agrees
with my textual analysis (which is, I believe, consistent with his writings), he might well
consider whether the complexity of our legal system forbids the adoption of his beautiful
Benjamin-Franklinesque simplicity: impeachment-as-assassination. See Chafetz, supra
note 1 passim.
2013]
299
an office created by statute can be terminated by Congress via statute, which,

although it does not formally remove an officer from office, effectively terminates an
officer from government service by terminating the office held.22 Finally, conviction
of certain crimes in the course of judicial proceedings sometimes works an automatic
removal or disqualification from office as determined by statute.23
22
Termination and removal are not coextensive. A removal leaves an office vacant, with
the possibility of a subsequent appointment. A termination, by contrast, leaves the appointing
officer (or commission) with no office to fill. The full extent of Congresss power to
terminate statutory offices has been and is controverted. Compare Seth Barrett Tillman,
Senate Termination of Presidential Recess Appointments, 101 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 82
(2007) (arguing that the Senate can terminate a presidential recess appointment by
reconvening and terminating its session), and Seth Barrett Tillman, Terminating Presidential
Recess Appointments: A Reply to Professor Brian C. Kalt, 101 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 94
(2007) (same), with Brian C. Kalt, Response, Keeping Recess Appointments in Their Place,
101 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 88 (2007) (putting forward constitutional and practical
objections to the proposed procedure), and Brian C. Kalt, Keeping Tillman Adjournments in
Their Place: A Rejoinder to Seth Barrett Tillman, 101 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 108 (2007)
(same). Does Congresss power to terminate statutory offices extend to Article III judges and
Justices and other officers with good behavior tenure? Apparently so. Compare Stuart v.
Laird, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 299 (1803) (Paterson, J.) (approving, by implication, congressional
termination of judicial office), with Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 725-27 (1986)
(Burger, C.J.) (denying, in dicta, propriety of congressional removals). Some have suggested
that Congress has no power to terminate and instantly recreate a terminated office. See
Saikrishna Prakash, Removal and Tenure in Office, 92 VA. L. REV. 1779, 1786 (2006) (In
other words, [according to this view] though Congress may terminate an office and thereby
oust the incumbent, it cannot enact a simple removal statute. Nor can Congress terminate an
office and recreate an identical office, for that would be, in substance, a simple removal
statute. [This] nuanced position presumably remains the view of the executive branch.
(collecting presidential statements and other Executive Branch authority)).
23
See, e.g., De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144, 158-59 (1960) (Frankfurter, J., plurality
opinion) (Barring convicted felons from certain employments is a familiar legislative device
to insure against corruption in specified, vital areas. Federal law has frequently and of old
utilized this type of disqualification. . . . In addition, a large group of federal statutes
disqualify persons from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States
because of their conviction of certain crimes, generally involving official misconduct.); see
also, e.g., supra note 21 and accompanying text; infra notes 55-65 and accompanying text.
Statutory removal frequently works a statutory disqualification in regard to holding appointed
or statutory offices. But this disqualification arises as a statutory, not as a constitutional
restriction against future office-holding. Likewise, to the extent that these statutes purport to
create a disqualification against holding federal elective positionsRepresentative, Senator,
Vice President, or Presidentthese statutes would appear to be unconstitutional. See U.S.
Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) (Stevens, J.) (holding that states may not
add to the textually express qualifications in the Constitution for Representatives and
Senators); Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 550 (1969) (Warren, C.J.) (suggesting that
Congress may not add to the textually express qualifications in the Constitution for
Representatives and Senators); THE FEDERALIST NO. 60 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4,
at 326 (noting that the qualifications for membership in Congress are defined and fixed in the
constitution, and are unalterable by the [national] legislature); CHAFETZ, supra note 13,
at 171 (same). But see P. Allan Dionisopoulos, A Commentary on the Constitutional Issues in
the Powell and Related Cases, 17 J. PUB. L. 103, 108 n.16, 111, 116-21 (1968) (arguing that
Congress may add statutory qualifications to congressional membership); John C. Eastman,
Open to Merit of Every Description? An Historical Assessment of the Constitutions
Qualifications Clauses, 73 DENV. U. L. REV. 89, 136 (1995) (concluding that the arguments
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Thus, outside of the impeachment context, removal can be effectuated by action

of each of the three branches of the federal government.24 The legal effect of
removalachieved by any of these means, including the mere passage of time in
regard to elected officialsis indistinguishable from that achieved by a Senate
conviction vote in the impeachment context.
What is that effect? A person removed in consequence of Senate conviction
loses his current statutory office25 or the presidency (a constitutional office) or vice
presidency (another constitutional office). That is all. Such a person is perfectly
free to seek any other elected positionstate or federaland any appointing
official, officer, or commission may choose that person for a vacant statutory office
(absent a statutory limitation).
In short, if a person convicted by the Senate has suffered, per Chafetz, a political
death, then it is a death with very little sting, for many individuals who have been
removed or suffered loss of office have come back another day and held (elective or
appointed) positions once again. Just think of Grover Clevelands two nonconsecutive presidential terms. A temporary interlude in the political wilderness
may be a personal or party setback, but it is not a death, metaphorically or otherwise.
against the exclusive interpretation of the Qualifications Clauses, and in favor of the power of
states to superadd to the qualifications listed in them, are stronger and more consistent, both
logically and with the historical record and the nature of the American regime). See
generally Roderick M. Hills, Jr., A Defense of State Constitutional Limits on Federal
Congressional Terms, 53 U. PITT. L. REV. 97, 113 n.59 (1991).
24
But cf. Gerhardt, supra note 15, at 49 (It would have been illogical for the framers to
have given Congress two separate methods to expel its own members.); Jason J. Vicente,
Impeachment, A Constitutional Primer, 3 TEX. REV. L. & POL. 117, 133 (1998) (Providing
two methods for removing a legislator seems redundant and illogical. (citing Gerhardt,
supra)). It is unclear to me what the basis for this intuition is. In regard to the removal of
officers, for example, few doubt that the Presidents power to remove (even high ranking)
Executive Branch officers is not exclusive. Such a result does not appear, to me at least,
illogical or redundant. See supra notes 21-23 and accompanying text.
Perhaps, an alternative reason to doubt that Congress may impeach, try, remove, and
disqualify its own members is that such processes would seem to trespass on the (apparent)
norm of intracameral autonomy. Compare Bruhl, supra note 9, at 996-1007 (affirming the
existence of a constitutional intracameral autonomy norm), with BERGER, infra note 42
(discussing the Foreign Emoluments Clause and implying that the ability of a member of
Congress to accept a gift from a foreign state hinges on the members receiving consent from
both houses of Congress to accept the gift), and Zephyr Teachout, The Anti-Corruption
Principle, 94 CORNELL L. REV. 341, 361-62, 364, 366, 410 n.302 (2009) (same); compare
AMAR, supra note 9, at 568 n.53 (Structurally, the Constitution provided for expulsion, not
impeachment, of rotten federal lawmakers. And in the impeachment of Senator William
Blount in the late 1790s, a majority of the Senate sitting as a high court of impeachment read
the Constitution in just this way . . . . (emphasis added)), with supra note 9 (collecting
contrary authority). Of course, finding a norm of intracameral autonomy assumes that we
already know that impeachment does not reach members of Congress. If, as a matter of
original meaning, impeachment does reach members of Congress, then no such norm exists,
or, at best, it only may be said to exist (weakly) in other contexts outside of impeachment.
25
See supra note 8; see also supra notes 5-7. Compare KYVIG, supra note 9, at 308
([I]mpeachment and conviction imposed no mandatory punishment other than the loss of
office . . . .), with GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 187 (noting that in earlier impeachment
trials . . . the Senate took separate votes on guilt and removal).
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Professor Chafetz might argue my position is too cramped: conviction and

removal carry with them a sort of moral opprobrium beyond the pure legal
consequences of removal. Perhaps the Framers expected that the judgment of the
Senate (founded on House charges) would carry serious weight with the public in
this regard. But that expectationthat the public would give due weight to the sense
of the Senate26was not embodied in the four corners of the national charter in any
meaningful way, and, more importantly, that expectation (if it existed at all) has
turned out to be dead wrong. Examples of the publics disregard for removals
effectuated by political officeholders (i.e., Senators and others) are not difficult to
come by. Senator William Blount was expelled from the Senate in 1797 by a twothirds vote, in a process akin to a Senate conviction in impeachment proceedings.
He returned to his native Tennessee to be elected to the state senate, and then was
chosen as that bodys president.27 Likewise, during the Civil War several senators
were expelled for aiding the Confederacy, but nevertheless held significant state and
federal positions after the war ended in 1865. For example, Virginia Senator Robert
M.T. Hunter was expelled in 1861; from 1874 to 1880, he held the office of state
treasurer, and from 1885 to 1887, he was collector of the Port of Tappahannock,
Virginiaa federal office.28 North Dakota Governor William Langer, after being
convicted in federal court of a felony, was removed from state office in 1934 by his
26
A successor Senate will not always give due weight to the sense of a prior Senate. The
Twenty-Third Senate entered a resolution censuring President Jackson for his decision to
remove government funds from the Bank of the United States absent express statutory
authority. After the next election, the successor Senate expunged the resolution from the
Senates Journal. Compare 23 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
197 (Washington, Duff Green 1833) (recording March 28, 1834 resolution censuring
President Jackson), with 26 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 12324 (Washington, Gales & Seaton 1836) (recording January 16, 1837 resolution expunging the
Jackson censure from the Journal). See generally 1 ROBERT C. BYRD, THE SENATE, 17891989: ADDRESSES ON THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE 127-41 (Mary Sharon Hall
ed., 1988). But see generally KYVIG, supra note 9, at 308 (noting that Alcee Hastings proved
unable to escape the stigma of impeachment altogether when, for example, his party
regained control of the House and he was denied a chairmanship).
27
See CHAFETZ, supra note 13 passim. See generally BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE
U.S. CONGRESS, bioguide.congress.gov (last visited Dec. 7, 2010) (entries for Blount, Bright,
Hastings, Hunter, Andrew Johnson, Waldo Johnson, Langer, Nicholson, and Powell).
28
There are several other such examples. Tennessee Senator Alfred O. P. Nicholson was
expelled in 1861; from 1870 to 1876, he served as Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme
Court. Missouri Senator Waldo P. Johnson was expelled in 1862; in 1875, he was chosen
president of his states constitutional convention. Indiana Senator Jesse D. Bright was
expelled in 1862; from 1867 to 1871, Bright was a member of the Kentucky House of
Representatives. Albeit, the Civil War and Reconstruction were arguably sui generis. See
BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, supra note 27. See generally
U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, 3 (No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress,
or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the
United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of
Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as
an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States,
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the
enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such
disability.).
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states supreme court. He was subsequently reelected to the governors post in 1937,
and in 1941, he was elected to the United States Senate. He was reelected to the
Senate in the three subsequent elections.29 Congressman Adam Clayton Powell was
excluded from membership by the House in 1967; he was reelected in a special
election caused by his exclusion, and, thereafter, reelected to the next Congress.30
Judge Alcee Hastings, an Article III judge, was impeached by the House in 1988
and convicted by the Senate in 1989. Subsequently, he ran for and won a House seat
in 1992. A position he holds to this day.31 Political death?
C. Is Senate Disqualification a Political Death Without Possibility of
Resurrection?32
As Professor Chafetz recognizes, disqualification by the Senate, a punishment it
may impose, in addition to conviction (and consequent automatic removal), leaves
the former office-holder free to pursue state office.33 This is no small thing. Under
the original Constitution, state legislatures chose United States senators and also had
the power to choose presidential electors themselves, without the intervention of any
29
See BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, supra note 27; JAMES
E. LEAHY, THE NORTH DAKOTA STATE CONSTITUTION: A REFERENCE GUIDE 61, 98 (2003).
During his term as Governor of North Dakota, William Langer was convicted of a felony in a
federal district court. After he was convicted, but before the conclusion of federal appellate
review, Langer was removed from his position as governor by his states supreme court in,
what was in effect, a collateral proceeding. See id. After he was removed from office, his
conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was subsequently reelected governor. See The
Expulsion Case of William Langer of North Dakota (1942), U.S. SENATE,
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/expulsion_cases/123WilliamLanger_ex
pulsion.htm (last visited Feb. 14, 2011). According to the consensus view, even if Langers
felony conviction had been affirmed on appeal, he, nonetheless, remained qualified to hold
a Senate seat as a matter of federal constitutional law. See supra note 23.
30
See supra note 27; see also supra note 23 (citing Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486
(1969) (Warren, C.J.)).
31
Judge Hastings has been continuously reelected since 1992, and he has been reelected as
recently as Tuesday, November 6, 2012. See KYVIG, supra note 9, at 309 ([Hastingss]
repeated elections to the House of Representatives signaled his constituents indifference to
his impeachment . . . . (emphasis added)); see also id. at 307 (explaining that post-1992,
[t]he resurrection of Alcee Hastings steadily continued (emphasis added)); id. at 306 (using
resurrection-language to describe Hastingss career); id. at 308 (Alcee Hastings dented the
notion of impeachment as the ultimate political disgrace . . . .). It is again worth noting that
even had Judge Hastings been disqualified by the Senate, according to the consensus view, he
would have been eligible to serve in Congress. See infra notes 70-72 and accompanying text.
But cf. KYVIG, supra note 9, at 309 (Until the 1990s no federal official impeached and
convicted had ever resumed a public career.).
Likewise, President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House and escaped Senate
conviction by a single vote. He was subsequently elected to the Senate for a term starting
in 1875 by his home states (that is Tennessees) legislature. See supra note 27.
32
Chafetz, supra note 1, at 421 (capitalization added).
33
Id. at 351 n.23.
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popular election.34 Even today, state officers hold a variety of powers intimately
affecting the federal government. State governors may, in certain circumstances,
make appointments to fill vacancies in the United States Senate.35 State legislatures
or state conventions ratify proposed federal constitutional amendments.36 State
legislatures make calls for Article V national conventions to amend the federal
constitution.37 State statutes determine voter qualifications for elected federal
office38 (subject to federal constitutional limitations39), and state statutes control
34
See U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 1 (1789) (The Senate of the United States shall be
composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years;
and each Senator shall have one Vote.), amended by U.S. CONST. amend. XVII (1913)
(mandating popular election of Senators); U.S. CONST. art. II, 1, cl. 1 (Each State shall
appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to
the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress . . . .). Arguably, state legislatures have retained this power, notwithstanding the
advent of popular election. See, e.g., Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 113-15 (2000) (Rehnquist,
C.J., concurring).
35
See U.S. CONST. amend. XVII, 2 (When vacancies happen in the representation of
any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill
such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive
thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the
legislature may direct.), amending U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 2 ([I]f Vacancies happen by
Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive
thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which
shall then fill such Vacancies.); Michael Stern, Im Not Dead . . . . Im Just in Congress,
POINT OF ORDER: A DISCUSSION OF CONGRESSIONAL LEGAL ISSUES (Jan. 6, 2011, 4:59 AM),
http://pointoforder.com/ (same).
36
See U.S. CONST. art. V; see also U.S. CONST. amend. XXI (ratifying amendment by
state convention process).
37
See U.S. CONST. art. V. Although state legislatures have made such calls from time to
time, no Article V convention has ever been convened. It is a matter of debate amongst
academics whether a sufficient number of states have made valid calls for a national
convention. Compare Michael Stokes Paulsen, A General Theory of Article V: The
Constitutional Lessons of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, 103 YALE L.J. 677, 684 & n.15
(1993) (suggesting the somewhat startling conclusion that Congress is currently obliged by
Article V to call a constitutional convention, unlimited in the subjects it may consider for
proposed amendments), with Sara R. Ellis et al., Note, Article V Constitutional Conventions:
A Primer, 78 TENN. L. REV. 663, 668 (2011) (noting that Congresss duty to call a
convention may not have been triggered because the state applications covered a multitude
of subjects rather than a single specific topic), id. at 668 n.28 ([I]t is reasonable to assume
that at least thirty-four [of fifty states, i.e., two-thirds of the states] specific applications [for an
Article V convention] must share the same subject area.), and Michael Stokes Paulsen, How
to Count to Thirty-Four: The Constitutional Case for a Constitutional Convention, 34 HARV.
J.L. & PUB. POLY 837, 855-58 (2011) (explaining that rescissions since 1993 leave only 33
valid state conventions calls, and 34 are necessary to trigger an Article V convention).
38
Cf., e.g., U.S. CONST. art. I, 2, cl. 1 (The House of Representatives shall be composed
of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in
each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of
the State Legislature.); U.S. CONST. amend. XVII, 1 (The electors [for the Senate] in each
State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the
State legislatures.).
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election procedures to such offices40 (although Congress has an express power to

override such state statutes41). Likewise, Professor Chafetz takes the position that
disqualified former officers can also be elected to Congress.42 This is nothing like a
39
See, e.g., U.S. CONST. amend. XV, 1 (The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.); cf. U.S. CONST. amend. XV, 2 (The Congress
shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.).
40
See, e.g., U.S. CONST. art. I, 4, cl. 1 (The Times, Places and Manner of holding
Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,
except as to the Places of ch[oo]sing Senators.); Shelby County v. Holder, No. 12-96, 570
U.S. ____, 2013 U.S. LEXIS 4917, at *23 (June 25, 2013) (Roberts, C.J.) ([T]he Federal
Government retains significant control over federal elections. For instance, the Constitution
authorizes Congress to establish the time and manner for electing Senators and
Representatives. But States have broad powers to determine the conditions under which the
right of suffrage may be exercised. (citations and quotation marks omitted)); THE FEDERALIST
NO. 44 (James Madison), supra note 4, at 248 (And the election of the house of
representatives, will equally depend [on the state legislatures] in the first instance; and will
probably, for ever be conducted by the officers and according to the laws of the states.).
41
42
See supra note 40 (quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, 4, cl. 1).
See Chafetz, supra note 1, at 351 n.23; see also Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 115
n.14 (same); Michael Stern, Is Former Judge Porteous Eligible to Serve in Congress?, POINT
OF ORDER: A DISCUSSION OF CONGRESSIONAL LEGAL ISSUES (Dec. 29, 2010, 4:25 AM),
http://pointoforder.com/ (same). Here too, there is no settled federal practice or jurisprudence
on this point. See Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 115 n.14 (noting that this issue was left
open in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 520 n.41 (1969) (Warren, C.J.)). As indicated
in the main text, Professor Chafetz takes the position that disqualified former officers may be
subsequently elected to Congress. His position appears to be the majority view in legal
academia today. (For what it is worth, I will venture to affirm that I share Chafetzs view on
this contested point.) But it must be admitted that this opinion is not, and, perhaps, has not
been universally held. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 65 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4,
at 351 (The punishment, which may be the consequence of conviction upon impeachment
[Tillman addingwhich appears to refer to disqualification], is not to terminate the
chastisement of the offender. After having been sentenced to a perpetual ostracism [Tillman
addingagain in apparent reference to disqualification] from the esteem and confidence, and
honors and emoluments of his country [Tillman addingwhich might be thought to include
election to Congress]; he will still be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary
course of law. (emphasis added)). The modern academic consensuspermitting a
disqualified officer to serve in Congressdoes not command universal assent among modern
judges and commentators. See Waggoner v. Hastings, 816 F. Supp. 716, 719-20 (S.D.
Fla. 1993) (Roettger, J.) (noting that impeached and convicted federal judge Alcee Hastings
had not been disqualified by the Senate and his apparent eligibility to sit in the House
thereafter; leaving the implication that had he been disqualified, his eligibility to sit in the
House was in question); RAOUL BERGER, IMPEACHMENT: THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS 225
n.10 (1974) (arguing that the Constitutions use of office and officer embraces Senators and
Representatives else a judge impeached, convicted, and disqualified to hold any office
could yet be elected to the Congress, for a member of Congress would not be a person
holding an office.); GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 60-61 (implying that a disqualified officer
cannot hold congressional office); MCKAY & JOHNSON, supra note 9, at 515 n.43 (implying
that a disqualified officer cannot hold congressional office); NOWAK & ROTUNDA, supra
note 10, at 153 n.9 ([W]hen the Senate impeaches someone, it can impose a disqualification
for U.S. Representative and Senator, as well as any other office of trust under the United
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305
States. (emphasis added)); Grossman & Yalof, supra note 12, at 12 n.8 (implying that a
disqualified officer cannot hold congressional office); Samahon, supra note 15, at 613 n.113
(implying that a disqualified officer cannot hold congressional office); J. Peter Pham &
Michael I. Krauss, Speaker Pelosis Impending Intelligence Failure, TCS DAILY (Nov. 9,
2006, 12:00 A.M.), http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2006/11/speaker-pelosisimpending-intelligence-failure.html (same).
A related controverted question is whether members of Congress are subject to impeachment
(as opposed to whether prior conviction and disqualification precludes such a person from
taking a seat in Congress). The modern consensus is that members are not subject to
impeachment. See, e.g., supra note 9 (quoting positions of Professors Akhil Amar, Pfander,
Prakash, and Smith); Vikram Amar, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill
Clinton, 16 CONST. COMM. 403, 406 n.7 (1999) (reviewing ANN COULTER, HIGH CRIMES AND
MISDEMEANORS (1998)) ([L]et me set the record straight on a non-truth [!] Ms. Coulter
asserts about the impeachability of Congresspersons. Notwithstanding her suggestions . . .
House members and Senators are not officers within the meaning of the impeachment
clauses of the Constitution and are thus not impeachable. (citing, somewhat unhelpfully,
Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 115-16)); Joel K. Goldstein, Taking from the Twenty-Fifth
Amendment: Lessons in Ensuring Presidential Continuity, 79 FORDHAM L. REV. 959, 1020
(2010) (asserting that legislative leaders, such as the Senate President pro tem and Speaker
of the House, cannot be impeached); cf., e.g., Letter from Akhil Reed Amar to Stuart Taylor
Jr. (Feb. 8, 1999), in Akhil Reed Amar, On Impeaching Presidents, supra note 9, at 327
(asserting, without explanation, that Federalist No. 65 is dramatic [!] historical evidence
against the proposition that private persons are impeachable). I know of only a single
Founding era source in clear agreement with the modern consensus. Compare JAMES
MONROE (nom de plume A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA), Observations Upon the Proposed Plan of
Federal Government (Petersburg, Hunter & Prentis 1788), in 1 THE WRITINGS OF JAMES
MONROE 1778-1794, at 347, 361 (Elibron Classics 2005) (Stanislaus Murray Hamilton ed.,
N.Y., G.P. Putnams Sons 1898) (I conceive that the Senators are not impeachable, and
therefore Governor Randolphs objection falls to the ground.), id. at 359 (same with regard to
Members of Congress generally), id. ([B]y no construction can [Senators] be considered as
civil officers of State.), and id. at 398 (noting that at first [I] conceived that the Senators
were liable to impeachment but later changed positions), with 3 ELLIOTS DEBATES, supra
note 10, at 202 (Who are your senators? They are chosen by the legislatures, and a third of
them go out of the Senate at the end of every second year. They may also be impeached.
There are no better checks upon earth. (quoting Edmund Randolphs June 10, 1788 speech at
the Virginia ratifying convention)). But again, this viewthat Members of Congress are
beyond the scope of the impeachment poweris not and has not been universally held. See
supra note 9 (describing Professor Isenberghs position); Ronald D. Rotunda, An Essay on the
Constitutional Parameters of Federal Impeachment, 76 KY. L.J. 707, 716 (1988) (Thus,
judges, as well as all legislators and all executive officials, whether in the highest or the
lowest departments of the national government, are subject to impeachment. (emphasis
added) (internal quotation marks omitted)); Letter from Stuart Taylor Jr. to Akhil Reed Amar
(Feb. 5, 1999), in Akhil Reed Amar, On Impeaching Presidents, supra note 9, at 325
(Similarly, civil officers is most naturally (and structurally) read as a limitation of this
mandatory sentencing provision to executive branch officials. I therefore doubt the
correctness of the conventional wisdom that the words civil officers were stuck into
Article II, Section 4 to denote a grab-bag category of all impeachable personsa grab-bag
that somehow has been read for 200 years or so to include Article III judges, but not Article I
senators!). Many early sources support Isenbergh, Rotunda, and Taylors position: i.e., that
office-holders other than those listed in the Impeachment Clause are subject to impeachment.
See, e.g., THE FEDERALIST NO. 66 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 357 (A fourth
objection to the senate, in the capacity of a court of impeachments, is derived from their union
with the executive in the power of making treaties. This, it has been said, would constitute the
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senators their own judges, in every case of a corrupt or perfidious execution of that trust.
After having combined with the executive in betraying the interests of the nation in a ruinous
treaty, what prospect, it is asked, would there be of their being made to suffer the punishment,
they would deserve, when they were themselves to decide upon the accusation brought against
them for the treachery of which they had been guilty?). My reading of Hamiltons position
in Federalist No. 66, although not universal, is not idiosyncratic. See, e.g., BUCKNER F.
MELTON, JR., THE FIRST IMPEACHMENT: THE CONSTITUTIONS FRAMERS AND THE CASE OF
SENATOR WILLIAM BLOUNT 49 & n.105 (1998) (citing Federalist No. 66 for the proposition
that Hamilton believed that legislators were amenable to impeachment, and noting that
Hamiltons view was widespread); see also PETER CHARLES HOFFER & N.E.H. HULL,
IMPEACHMENT IN AMERICA, 1635-1805, at 157 (1984) (noting that Hamilton took the position
that Senators were impeachable). But see GERHARDT, supra note 10, at 15 & 199 n.21
(asserting that Hamilton took the position that members of Congress could not be
impeached (citing Federalist No. 66)). Hamilton was not the only early authority who
asserted that members of Congress were within the scope of the impeachment power. See,
e.g., HOFFER & HULL, supra at 157 (noting that Wilson, Hamilton, Mason, and others took
the view that members of the upper house were impeachable). Compare, e.g., BERGER, supra
at 224-33 (collecting early authorities suggesting that Senators and Representatives are subject
to impeachment), with AMAR, supra note 9, at 568 n.53 (Bergers argument on this point
made a hash of constitutional text, structure, and precedent. (emphasis added)), and Amar &
Amar, supra note 9, at 115 (dropping the ellipses and misquoting James Iredell as stating:
[W]ho ever heard of impeaching a member of the legislature? when, in fact, Iredell stated:
[W]ho ever heard of impeaching a member of the legislature for any legislative misconduct?
(emphasis added) (quoting 4 ELLIOTS DEBATES, supra note 10, at 127)); compare, e.g.,
AMAR, supra note 9, at 568 n.53 ([I]n England even private persons were impeachable; and
the Constitution plainly broke with this aspect of English law. . . . Textually only Officers of
the United States are impeachable. (emphasis added)), with U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 6.
(extending the reach of the Senate Trial Clause to person[s], not Officers of the United
States), and U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 7 (describing the reach of the Removal and
Disqualification Clause in terms of any Party convicted, not Officers of the United
States). The use of person[s] or party, rather than Officers or Officers of the United
States may mean the scope of the impeachment power extends beyond Officers to former
officers and/or to Members of Congress (or even to former members) and/or to private
persons. See Goldstein, supra at 1023 (Person is, of course, broader than Officer of the
United States or even Officer . . . .). Compare, e.g., 2 ELLIOTS DEBATES, supra note 10,
at 477 (James Wilson: I admit the force of the observation made by the gentleman from
Fayette, (Mr. Smilie,) that, when two thirds of the Senate concur to forming a bad treaty, it
will be hard to procure a vote of two thirds against [the Senators], if they [the Senators] should
be impeached [!]. I think such a thing is not to be expected [Tillman addingas a practical
matter]; and so far they [the Senators] are without that immediate degree of responsibility
which I think requisite to make this part of the work perfect. (emphasis in the original)), with
AMAR, supra note 9, at 299 (suggesting that [a]t the Founding, Madison and Wilson were
the two deepest Federalist thinkers), and id. at 467 n.* (stating that Wilson was far more
fluent in law than Madison). Likewise, the decision of the House on July 7, 1797 to impeach
Senator Blount was dependent on the majoritys believing that Senators were subject to
impeachment, notwithstanding the fact that a majority of the Senate arguably rejected that
position on January 14, 1799. See 3 JOURNAL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 72-73 (Washington, Gales & Seaton 1826) (recording July 7,
1797 resolution of the House to impeach Blount); 2 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA 392 (Washington, Gales & Seaton 1820) (recording Senate adoption of a
resolution to expel Blount on July 8, 1797); 8 ANNALS OF CONG. 2319 (Washington, Gales &
Seaton 1851) (recording Senate adoption of a resolution on January 11, 1799 to the effect that:
this Court ought not to hold jurisdiction). Modern authorities continue to disagree as to the
meaning of the Senates opaque resolution affirming that the Senate ought not to hold
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307
political death, much less a political death without chance of a return to highly
significant public office, including positions within the federal government43 and
jurisdiction. See supra note 9 (collecting authority). Compare, e.g., KYVIG, supra note 9,
at 22 (The outcome of the Blount case left unresolved most questions about impeachment,
including whether legislators fell within the category of civil officers of the United States
eligible for impeachment.), and EMILY FIELD VAN TASSEL & PAUL FINKELMAN,
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY FROM 1787 TO THE PRESENT 88 (1999)
(It is not clear whether the decision [by the Senate to terminate the Blount proceedings] was
based on Blounts argument that senators were not government officers or on his argument
that he was not an officer because he had been expelled.), with HUPMAN, supra note 9, at 3
([The Senate] decided that a Senator who has been expelled from his seat is not after such
expulsion subject to impeachment.), AMAR, supra note 9, at 199 n.* (affirming that the
Senate decided in Blount that Senators were not impeachable because they were not
Officers), William F. Swindler, High Court of Congress: Impeachment Trials, 1797-1936,
60 A.B.A. J. 420, 421 (1974) (suggesting that the Senate held in Blount that a former Senator
having been expelled by the Senate, as opposed to having resigned, is outside the scope of the
impeachment power), and Horatius, The Presidential Knot, THE PHILADELPHIA GAZETTE &
DAILY ADVERTISER, Jan. 10, 1801, at 1 (Upon the impeachment of William Blount, a
distinction was taken between an officer and a Member of Congress; and it was held that a
Senator was not an officer of the United States, and therefore was not liable to impeachment.
Upon this ground, the majority of the Senate would not hold cognizance of that
impeachment.) (reprinting January 6, 1801 article from the Washington Advertiser). Some
believe Horatius was John Marshall, then Chief Justice. See ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, THE LIFE
OF JOHN MARSHALL 541 n.2 (Standard Library ed. 1916) (taking the position that Marshalls
authorship would appear to be reasonably certain); see also BRUCE ACKERMAN, THE
FAILURE OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS: JEFFERSON, MARSHALL, AND THE RISE OF PRESIDENTIAL
DEMOCRACY 45 (2005) ([T]here is substantial reason to believe that the brilliant author of the
Horatius essay was none other than John Marshall himself.); Vasan Kesavan, Is the Electoral
Count Act Unconstitutional?, 80 N.C. L. REV. 1653, 1781 n.273 (2002) (noting that
Professor [Bruce] Ackerman believes that Horatius is John Marshall . . . .).
Moreover, to the extent that the House and Senate are considered coordinate authorities, the
Blount impeachment (by the House) and acquittal (by the Senate) are ambiguous evidence for
the position that members of Congress are outside of the scope of the impeachment power.
See generally Blount, William (1749-1800), BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE U.S.
CONGRESS, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000570 (last visited
Nov. 17, 2010).
43
Other positions which a disqualified officer might hold include: advisors to the
President, even those situated in the White House, who lack individualized legal discretion or
power to affect binding legal relations; an office created by state compact; federal elector;
member of a state convention convened to act on a proposed amendment to the federal
constitution; member of an Article V national convention called by two-thirds of the states;
qui tam plaintiff in a federal cause of action; an American-sponsored nominee or appointee to
office in an ad hoc or permanent international, multinational, or binational institution or
commission (e.g., a treaty-created office); a holder of a letter of marque and reprisal; a
director, trustee, member, officer, or employee of a federally chartered corporation, etc. The
list is, if not endless, quite substantial. See Aaron Saiger, Obamas Czars for Domestic
Policy and the Law of the White House Staff, 79 FORDHAM L. REV. 2577, 2598 (2011)
(concluding that so-called czars situated in the White House are not officers of the United
States per the Appointments Clause, but are, rather, at-will employees of the President); cf.
Officers of the United States Within the Meaning of the Appointments Clause, 2007 WL
1405459, at *24 n.13 (Apr. 16, 2007) (Bradbury, Acting Asst. Atty Gen.) (taking no position
in regard to whether or not an office of the United States, per the Appointments Clause, may
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[Vol. 61:285
state offices of every description, including those that deeply influence the operation
of the federal government.44
II. BUT IS THE PRESIDENCY DIFFERENT?
Professor Chafetz might argue that his article was not about impeachment and
disqualification generally, but about the impeachment and disqualification of
Presidents. But here too, I hope to show that his position is not on firm ground. If a
President or Vice President or officer is impeached by the House, and convicted,
removed, and disqualified by the Senate, he is barred from holding any Office of
be validly created by treaty, as opposed to by statute); ALEXANDER HAMILTON, THE DEFENCE
NO. 37 (Jan. 6, 1796), reprinted in 20 THE PAPERS OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 13, 20 (Harold
C. Syrett ed., 1974) (As to what respects the Commissioners agreed to be appointed [under
the Jay Treaty with Great Britain], they are not in a strict sense OFFICERS. They are
arbitrators between the two Countries. Though in the Constitutions, both of the U[nited]
States and of most of the Individual states, a particular mode of appointing officers is
designated, yet in practice it has not been deemed a violation of the provision to appoint
Commissioners or special Agents for special purposes in a different mode. (fonts in the
original)). But see Akhil Reed Amar, Philadelphia Revisited: Amending the Constitution
Outside Article V, 55 U. CHI. L. REV. 1043, 1061 n.67 (1988) ([I]t should be noted that if
[Article V] delegates can be considered officers of the United Statesand it is not
implausible to view them as such . . . .). Modern authorities are divided on the propriety of
the practice of the appointment of American members to international arbitrations outside of
the confines of the Appointments Clause. Compare Harold H. Bruff, Can Buckley Clear
Customs?, 49 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1309 (1992) (supporting the validity of such
appointments), with Jim C. Chen, Appointments With Disaster: The Unconstitutionality of
Binational Arbitral Review Under the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, 49
WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1455 (1992) (opposing).
44
Historically, this has certainly been the case. See, e.g., THE FEDERALIST NO. 45 (James
Madison), supra note 4, at 252 (Without the intervention of the state legislatures [which
determine the process by which electors are chosen or elected], the president of the United
States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment,
and will perhaps in most cases of themselves determine it.); cf., e.g., THE FEDERALIST NO. 36
(Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 189 (In other cases [involving the potential for both
federal and state taxation], the probability is, that the United States will either wholly abstain
from the objects pre-occupied for local purposes, or will make use of the state officers and
state regulations, for collecting the additional [federal] imposition.). Compare, e.g., THE
FEDERALIST NO. 44 (James Madison), supra note 4, at 248 (The election of the . . . senate,
will depend in all cases, on the legislatures of the several states.), with U.S. CONST.
amend. XVII (providing for popular election of senators). In modern times, some state
Secretaries of State prepare certificates of election or credentials for Representatives-elect and
Senators-elect. See, e.g., N.J. STAT. ANN. 19:22-7 (West 1999); cf., e.g., Scott Conroy,
Secretary Of The Senate Explains Why Burris Wasnt Seated, POLITICAL HOTSHEET (Jan. 6,
2009,
5:17
PM),
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-4702877-503544.html
(explaining that the Secretary of the United States Senate refused to seat Burris, who was
appointed to the seat by embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, because [Burris] lacked
the necessary signature of the Illinois Secretary of State, Jesse White, and the state seal of
Illinois). Likewise, governors certify the votes of electors for President and Vice President.
See Act of Feb. 3, 1887 (the Electoral Count Act), ch. 90, 15, 1524 Stat. 373 (codified as
amended at 3 U.S.C. 5-6, 15-18 (2000)) (But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of
the counting of such votes [of competing slates of electors], then, and in that case, the votes of
the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under
the seal thereof, shall be counted.).
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309
honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.45 Professor Chafetz affirms that this
bar does not extend to congressional office. But, does the bar preclude a disqualified
45
U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 7. The view that the presidency is an Office . . . of or under
the United States amounts to little more than free-floating legal intuition. See, e.g.,
Applicability of the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause and the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act
to the Presidents Receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2009 WL 6365082, at *3 (Dec. 7, 2009)
(Barron, Acting Asst. Atty Gen.) (announcing in ipse dixit that [t]he President surely
hold[s] an[] Office of Profit or Trust[] [under the United States] . . . . (emphasis added)
(quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, 9, cl. 8)); Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the
Incompatibility Clause Apply to the President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 143
(stating that the President is most certainly an officer under the United States (emphasis
added)); Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, Response, Why the Incompatibility Clause Applies to
the Office of President, 4 DUKE J. CONST. L. & PUB. POLY 143, 143 (2009), 4 DUKE J. CONST.
L. & PUB. POLY SIDEBAR 35, 35 (2008) (asserting, without citation to any authority, that
[t]he President occupies an Office under the United States and denominating that position
the conventional wisdom (emphasis added)); Josh Chafetz, 20th Amendment Trivia,
CONLAWPROF (Nov. 10, 2008, 12:17:44 PST), http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/conlawprof/2008November/033299.html (I happen to think that the President is an officer under the United
States, but some think otherwise. (emphasis added)); see also, e.g., AMAR, supra note 9,
at 171 (The instant such a [legislative leader] became acting president [under a succession
statute], he would thereby hold[] an Office under the United States . . . . (emphasis
added)); cf., e.g., Memorandum for the Vice President, from Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Asst.
Atty Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Constitutionality of the Vice Presidents Services as
Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, at *3 n.1 (Apr. 18, 1961), available
at http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (click April 1961 Katzenbach Memo)
(affirming, without citation to any authority, that the Vice President holds an Office under
the United States[] (quoting the Incompatibility Clause)); Memorandum for the Vice
President, from Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Asst. Atty Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, Re:
Participation by the Vice President in the Affairs of the Executive Branch, at *10 n.10
(Mar. 9, 1961), available at http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (click
March 1961 Katzenbach Memo) (same); Richard D. Friedman, Some Modest Proposals on
the Vice-Presidency, 86 MICH. L. REV. 1703, 1720 n.72 (1988) (arguing that the vice
presidency is an Office under the United States (emphasis added)); John W. Whelan, The
Law of Public Administration: Need for Legal Study, 53 GEO. L.J. 953, 972 n.67 (1965)
(asserting that the Vice President . . . holds an office under the United States). Compare
John F. Manning, Response, Not Proved: Some Lingering Questions About Legislative
Succession to the Presidency, 48 STAN. L. REV. 141, 146 (1995) (asserting, without analysis,
that [t]he Presidency is surely an Office under the United States[] (emphasis added)), with
John F. Manning, Separation of Powers as Ordinary Interpretation, 124 HARV. L. REV. 1939,
2003 (2011) (In the end, the special committee on postponed matters struck a compromise,
vesting the authority over appointments of all officers in the President of the United States,
subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. (emphasis added)). Has Manning changed
his position? Or, is he positing a difference between officers of and under the United States?
As stated, the viewthat the President is an Officer under the United Statesis an intuition.
To the extent that this intuition relies on separation of powers norms, it is ahistorical. See
Oliver P. Field, The Vice-Presidency of the United States, 56 AM. L. REV. 365, 382 (1922)
(Whether the president and vice-president are officers of the United States is a subject on
which conflicting opinions are held. It is not possible to deal here at length with . . . that
question . . . . (footnote omitted)); infra note 67 (collecting authority based on the
Constitutions text supporting the contrary position, i.e., that the President is not an officer of
the United States); infra notes 77-79 (collecting American and British authority supporting the
position that the President is not an officer of the United States).
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former officer from holding the presidency? Professor Chafetz seems to think so.
After all, what else could he mean by death without possibility of resurrection
except that a removed and disqualified President is unable to hold his prior office,
that is, the presidency?46
But what is the basis for that view: that the presidency is an Office . . . under the
United States, i.e., an office within the scope of the Disqualification Clause?47 If
46
See, e.g., Chafetz, supra note 1, at 351 ([L]ike death, impeachment and conviction may
be permanent.); Vaidotas A. Vaicaitis, Lithuania, in CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF 10 EU
MEMBER STATES: THE 2004 ENLARGEMENT VI-31 & n.31 (Constantijn Kortmann et al. eds.,
2006) (noting that the Constitutional Court held that removal of a president by impeachment
precludes his later standing in presidential or parliamentary elections, and precludes his
holding ministerial office, and citing the coordinate provision of the United States
Constitution); see also, e.g., Josh Chafetz, 20th Amendment Trivia, CONLAWPROF (Nov. 10,
2008, 12:17:44 PST), http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/conlawprof/2008-November/033299.html
(If you think that the President is an officer under the United States, then a President-elect
could fail to qualify by having been impeached and disqualified . . . . I happen to think that
the President is an officer under the United States, but some think otherwise. (emphasis
added)); cf. Michael Stern, Could Judge Porteous Become President?, POINT OF ORDER: A
DISCUSSION OF CONG. LEGAL ISSUES (Feb. 2, 2011, 8:30 AM), http://pointoforder.com/
(same).
47
See supra notes 7 & 45; infra note 67; see also AMAR, supra note 9, at 171 (The instant
such a [legislative leader] became acting president [under a succession statute], he would
thereby hold[] an Office under the United States . . . . (emphasis added)); id. at 625 n.38;
Calabresi, Response, Political Question, supra note 1, at 159 n.24 (The best reading is that
the President and the Vice President are the Officers of the United States contemplated by
this language in the Appointments Clause. (emphasis added)); id. at 165-66 (suggesting that a
normal President, unlike an Acting President, is an Officer of the United States);
Friedman, supra note 45, at 1720 (arguing that the vice presidency is an Office under the
United States, and supporting that position with an argument to the effect that the Vice
President is an officer of the United States (emphasis added)); cf. John O. McGinnis,
Impeachment: The Structural Understanding, 67 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 650, 660 (1999) ([The
Disqualification Clause] shows that the Framers recognized that officials who should be
impeached and convicted may not only remain popular in the face of serious charges, but even
after conviction. This provision is consistent with the Framers understanding that popularity
alone is not the only qualification for office . . . .). Compare Amar & Amar, supra note 9,
at 119 n.34 (A quibbler [!] might try to argue that the President does not, strictly speaking,
hold[] . . . Office under the United States, and is instead a sui generis figure. (emphasis
added)), with Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 749 (1982) (Powell, J.) (The President
occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme. (emphasis added)), Suspension of
the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, 10 Op. Atty. Gen. 74, 79 (1861) (Bates, Atty
Gen.) (The President is a department [Tillman addingnot an officer] of the government;
and . . . the only department which consists of a single man . . . . (emphasis added)), KALT,
supra note 14, at 17 ([T]he president can argue that he is the only person in the government
for whom the personal and the official are linked so inextricably. (emphasis added)), id.
at 16 (The answer is that the president really is uniquely indispensable. (emphasis added)),
Akhil Reed Amar, On Prosecuting Presidents, 27 HOFSTRA L. REV. 671, 673 (1999) (But the
Presidency is constitutionally uniquein the President the entirety of the power of a branch of
government is vested.), Akhil Reed Amar & Brian C. Kalt, The Presidential Privilege
Against Prosecution, 2 NEXUS 11, 11 & passim (1997) (noting that [t]he [p]resident [i]s
[u]nique), Akhil Reed Amar & Neal Kumar Katyal, Executive Privileges and Immunities:
The Nixon and Clinton Cases, 108 HARV. L. REV. 701, 702 (1995) (noting the presidents
unique constitutional role), and Chafetz, supra note 1, at 350 n.13 (noting the
constitutional uniqueness of the presidency (emphasis added)). Quibble?
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311
there is none, then surely Professor Chafetzs metaphor fails. To put it another way,
if an impeached, convicted, removed, and disqualified former President is
constitutionally eligible to hold the presidency again, then resurrection is quite
possible.
In papers and publications over the past several years, I have repeatedly made the
claim that the President and Vice President are neither officers of the United States,
nor officers under the United States.48 In support of my position, I noted that the
One early commentator seems to have suggested that disqualification extends only to
appointed office. See WILLIAM ALEXANDER DUER, OUTLINES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
JURISPRUDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES 94 (N.Y., Collins & Hannay 1833) (noting that if
convicted an appointment made by the Executive authority is superseded and if disqualified
the party is rendered incapable of re-appointment to any office).
48
I am not arguing that these two phrases (officers of the United States and officers under
the United States) have identical meaning, but only that they are related terms of art. My view
is that officers of the United States extends exclusively to officers chosen under the aegis of
the Appointments Clause, the Inferior Office Appointments Clause, and the Recess
Appointments Clause. Officers under the United States is a superset of the former, and also
includes non-member non-presiding legislative officers holding statutory offices (e.g., the
Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the Senateoffices receiving statutory emoluments
although outside the scope of the Appointments Clause). See also Peter W. Johnston, The
Legal Personality of the Western Australia Parliament, 20 U.W. AUSTL. L. REV. 323, 336
(1990) ([T]he Clerks and the Parliamentary staff are in an ambiguous situation. Their status
is somewhat unique.); cf. G.J. Craven, A Few Fragments of State Constitutional Law, 20
U.W. AUSTL. L. REV. 353, 355 (1990) (To whom are [state parliamentary officers]
answerable?). There are some substantial materials contemporaneous with ratification
supporting this position, including debate from the Philadelphia Convention. Under this view,
neither officers of the United States nor officers under the United States includes either the
presidency or vice presidency. See Tillman, Why Our Next President, infra note 50, at 114
n.17 (noting that Edmund Randolph at the Philadelphia Convention used office . . . under the
authority of the United States in a way that embraced legislative officers, and that Luther
Martin reported Randolphs language to the Maryland legislature); see also supra notes 10
(discussing officers of the United States), 13 (discussing Officers . . . under the United States),
infra note 67 (summarizing argument and evidence tending to establish that the President and
Vice President are neither officers of the United States nor Officers . . . under the United
States). But see Vasan Kesavan, The Very Faithless Elector?, 104 W. VA. L. REV. 123, 129
n.28 (2001) (citing nineteenth century materials for the position that The textual argument is
incredibly [!] straightforward: A Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United
States holds an Office . . . under the United States and is therefore an Officer of the United
States. (emphasis added)). But compare U.S. CONST. art. I, 8, cl. 18 (distinguishing, in the
Necessary and Proper Clause, department[s] from officer[s]), with Suspension of the
Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, 10 Op. Atty. Gen. 74, 79 (Bates, Atty Gen.) (The
President is a department of the government; and, although the only department which
consists of a single man, he is charged with a greater range and variety of powers and duties
than any other department. He is a civil magistrate . . . . (emphasis added)). Interestingly,
Professor Prakash has characterized Batess opinion as remarkable, and as embracing a
curious distinction, and finally he quotes approvingly another scholars conclusion to the
effect that Batess opinion was simply incomprehensible. Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash,
The Great Suspenders Unconstitutional Suspension of the Great Writ, 3 ALB. GOVT L. REV.
575, 581, 583 (2010) (quoting John P. Frank, Edward Bates: Lincolns Attorney General, 10
AM. J. LEGAL HIST. 34, 43 (1966)). The inability of modern scholars to understand Batess
opinion may be a reflection of the world we (and I include myself) have lost. See, e.g., Steven
G. Calabresi & Saikrishna B. Prakash, The Presidents Power to Execute the Laws, 104 YALE
312
[Vol. 61:285
L.J. 541, 638 n.428 (1994) (Our first President was not involved only in vital administrative
affairs, however, as he intimately involved himself in seemingly trivial matters as well. White
insists that no collector of customs, captain of a cutter, keeper of a lighthouse, or surveyor of
revenue was appointed except after special consideration by the President. (emphasis
added) (quoting LEONARD D. WHITE, THE FEDERALISTS 106 (1948))). The loyalty and courage
of a lighthouse keeper or cutter captain in the face of an enemy flotilla may have been the only
means of advance warning of an invasion. When the United States was in diapers, perhaps,
the selection of such personnel might have been substantially more important than the choice
of and centralized control over United States Attorneys, i.e., high profile public positions of
great interest to certain law professors and historians. See ROBERT A. CIUCEVICH, TYBEE
ISLAND: THE LONG BRANCH OF THE SOUTH 19 (2005) ([During the War of 1812] [t]here was,
however, a system of early warning arranged with the keeper of Tybee lighthouse, who would
warn of an approaching British fleet . . . .); Portsmouth Harbor Light, NEW ENGLAND
LIGHTHOUSES: A VIRTUAL GUIDE, http://lighthouse.cc/portsmouth/history.html (last visited
Dec. 29, 2010) (It appears that the lighthouse was not lit from 1774 to 1784, although it did
serve as a lookout post in the defense of Portsmouth [New Hampshire] during the Revolution.
In 1784, the tower was renovated and relighted. The lighthouse was transferred to the federal
government in 1791, and in 1793 President George Washington ordered that the light be
maintained at all times, with a keeper living on site.); E-mail from William Thiesen, Atlantic
Area Historian, United States Coast Guard to Seth Barrett Tillman (Jan. 17, 2011) ([D]uring
the War of 1812, revenue cutter captains would report all movements of enemy units after
they made sightings of [Royal Navy] vessels and returned to port.); cf. Prakash, supra
note 45, at 148 (affirming, in a 2008 publication, that the President is both an officer under
the United States and an officer of the United States, and suggesting that the contrary
position is highly obscure (emphasis added)). I submit that Prakashs position is (once
again) indicative of the world we have lost.
[C]ivil officers of the United States meant such, as derived their appointment from,
and under the national government, and not those persons, who, though members of
the government, derived their appointment from the states, or the people of the states.
In this view, the enumeration of the president and vice president, as impeachable
officers, was indispensable; for they derive, or may derive, their office from a source
paramount to the national government. And the [Impeachment Clause] of the
[C]onstitution . . . does not even affect to consider them officers of the United States.
It says, the president, vice-president, and all civil officers (not all other civil officers)
shall be removed, &c. The language of the clause, therefore, would rather lead to the
conclusion, that they were enumerated, as contradistinguished from, rather than as
included in the description of, civil officers of the United States.
2 STORY, COMMENTARIES, supra note 9, 791, at 260 (emphasis added); DAVID A.
MCKNIGHT, THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES: A CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL
EXPOSITION OF ITS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN THE CONSTITUTION, AND OF THE ACTS AND
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS ENFORCING IT 346 (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1878)
(noting that [i]t is obvious that . . . the President is not regarded as an officer of, or under, the
United States, but as one branch of the Government. (emphasis added)); infra note 67
(collecting authority). Compare AMAR, supra note 14, at 577 n.17 (suggesting that the
President and Vice President are listed separately from civil officers in the Impeachment
Clause to blunt any argument that their role atopor in the VPs case, potentially atopthe
military chain of command removes them from the category of civil officers), with Burton
v. United States, 202 U.S. 344, 369-70 (1906) (Harlan, J.) ([A]nyone convicted under [the
statutory] provision[] shall be incapable of holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under
the government of the United States, refers only to offices created by, or existing under the
direct authority of, the national government, as organized under the Constitution, and not to
offices the appointments to which are made by the states, acting separately, albeit proceeding,
in respect of such appointments, under the sanction of that instrument. While the Senate, as a
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Commissions Clause mandates that the President commission all49 officers of the
United States, yet historically, Presidents and Vice Presidents (like members of
Congresswho are also elected officials) have not received such commissions (as
do, by contrast, cabinet members).50 In response, Professor Saikrishna Prakash
branch of the legislative department, owes its existence to the Constitution, and participates in
passing laws that concern the entire country, its members are chosen by state legislatures, and
cannot properly be said to hold their places under the government of the United States.
(emphasis added)). In my view, Prakashs characterization of views with which he disagrees
as highly obscure is hyperbole and free-floating intuitionism. His criticism is not analytic.
It is not even consistent with his own prior writings. Indeed, this highly obscure view is one
Professor Prakash used to actively espouse, at least until 2008. See, e.g., Saikrishna Prakash,
How the Constitution Makes Subtraction Easy, 92 VA. L. REV. 1871, 1871 (2006) (affirming
that Congress may remove, via statute, all officers of the United States, save for federal
judges with good behavior tenurea conclusion, which quite obviously, Prakash did not
intend to apply to the presidency and vice presidency (emphasis added)); Saikrishna Prakash,
The Chief Prosecutor, 73 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 521, 583 n.360 (2005) (The Appointments
Clause grants the president the power to appoint all officers of the United States, with the
advice and consent of the Senate. (emphasis added)); Saikrishna B. Prakash, Branches
Behaving Badly: The Predictable and Often Desirable Consequences of the Separation of
Powers, 12 CORNELL J.L. & PUB. POLY 543, 546 (2003) (noting that the Constitution grants
to the Senate the responsibility of confirming all non-inferior officers of the United States
(emphasis added)); Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, Deviant Executive Lawmaking, 67 GEO.
WASH. L. REV. 1, 41 n.244 (1998) (noting that the Appointments Clause establish[es] the
requirement of senate confirmation for all officers, but permitting Congress, by law, to vest
the appointment of inferior officers with the President, heads of departments, and courts
(emphasis added)); Saikrishna Prakash, Regulating Presidential Powers, 91 CORNELL L. REV.
215, 244 n.154 (2005) (reviewing HAROLD J. KRENT, PRESIDENTIAL POWERS (2005)) (I have
argued elsewhere that the [Inferior Office Appointments Clause] was necessary as a means of
circumventing the burdensome requirement that all officers of the United States be appointed
by the President and confirmed by the Senate. (emphasis added)). It is difficult to
understand what Professor Prakashs current position is. See, e.g., Saikrishna Bangalore
Prakash, When an Appointment Vests 19 (U. Va. School of Law Public Law & Legal Theory
Working Paper Series 2012-16), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=2008396
([T]he Appointments Clause provides that the President shall nominate, and by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate, appoint all officers of the United States. . . . [T]he President
must commission all officers of the United States. (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted)).
Does not Professor Prakashs 2012 language exclude the President and Vice President from
the category of officers of the United States?
49
U.S. CONST. art. II, 3 ([The President] . . . shall Commission all the Officers of the
United States. (emphasis added)); see also Raoul Berger, Impeachment for High Crimes
and Misdemeanors, 44 S. CAL. L. REV. 395, 424 (1971) (One who would make all mean
less than all has the burden of proving why the ordinary meaning should not prevail. (citing
Henry M. Hart, Jr., Book Review, 67 HARV. L. REV. 1456, 1465 (1954))); cf. AMAR, supra
note 9, at 236 (In the Article III vesting clause and roster, shall and all meant what they
said.); Vasan Kesavan, Is the Electoral Count Act Unconstitutional?, 80 N.C. L. REV. 1653,
1792 (2002) (The word every . . . means every and not some.).
50
See, e.g., Seth Barrett Tillman, Opening Statement, Why President-Elect Obama May
Keep His Senate Seat After Assuming the Presidency, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10,
at 135-40; Seth Barrett Tillman, Closing Statement, An Utterly Implausible Interpretation
of the Constitution: A Reply to Professor Steven G. Calabresi, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra
note 10, at 146-53. Compare Seth Barrett Tillman, Why Our Next President May Keep His or
Her Senate Seat: A Conjecture on the Constitutions Incompatibility Clause, 4 DUKE J. CONST.
314
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suggested that the validity of my position depends on whether I could produce

evidence supporting my historical claim, i.e., that Presidents and Vice Presidents
have not received presidential commissions.51 I can. Indeed, there is an abundance
of such evidence.52 By contrast, Professor Steven Calabresi suggested that in order
to determine the original public meaning of these related phrases (officers of and
L. & PUB. POLY 107 (2009), 4 DUKE J. CONST. L. & PUB. POLY SIDEBAR 1 (2008), with
Prakash, supra note 45.
51
52
See Prakash, supra note 45, at 147.
See, e.g., CASE OF BRIGHAM H. ROBERTS, OF UTAH, H. REP. NO. 56-85, pt. 1, at 36
(1900) ([T]he provision in the last paragraph of section 3, of article 2, relating to the duties of
the President, that he shall commission all the officers of the United States, does not mean that
he is to commission members of Congress, [and] he is himself an officer, and he does not
commission himself, nor does he commission the Vice President . . . .); MORTON
ROSENBERG, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., APPLICABILITY OF THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE (ARTICLE
I, SECTION 6, CLAUSE 2) OF THE CONSTITUTION TO THE OFFICE OF VICE-PRESIDENT CRS-10
(1973), available at http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (click Rosenberg
Memorandum) (Of course, the Vice-President is not commissioned by the President and it is
significant that under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the nomination and confirmation of a
new Vice-President by both Houses of Congress is not followed by a commissioning.); Roy
E. Brownell II, Can the President Recess Appoint a Vice President?, 42 PRESIDENTIAL STUD.
Q. 622, 628 (2012) ([T]he unavoidable conclusion to draw . . . is that the [vice president] is
not an Officer of the United States . . . .); see also, e.g., 3 ASHER C. HINDS, HINDS
PRECEDENTS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES 2316, at 671 (1907)
(It is provided that the President shall commission all officers, and that all civil officers shall
be removed on impeachment and conviction; but the President does not commission himself
and the Vice-President, and therefore as it was intended to affect them by the impeachment
power, it became necessary to expressly name them. (quoting Alexander H. Dallass speech
on January 4, 1799 for the defendant at the Blount Impeachment trial before the Senate));
FRANCIS WHARTON, STATE TRIALS OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF
WASHINGTON AND ADAMS 268 (Philadelphia, Carey & Hart 1849) ([The President] is an
officer himself, and so expressly denominated throughout the 2d article, and yet he has no
commission. It is equally clear that the Vice-President is an officer, and yet not
commissioned. (quoting Congressman James A. Bayard, Sr.s speech on January 3, 1799 for
the House managers at the Blount Impeachment trial before the Senate)); cf., e.g., FEERICK,
supra note 9, at 195 n. (suggesting that Vice Presidents nominated by the President and
confirmed by Congress under the aegis of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment do not receive
commissions); Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the
President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 145 (affirming that historically
presidents and vice presidents have not received commissions, and denominating such failure
an oversight!). Generally, I would expect that Professor Calabresi is a particularly reliable
source in regard to conventions surrounding the vice presidency, because heunlike others
who have taken contrary positionsworked for a sitting vice president. See Steven G.
Calabresi & Joan L. Larsen, One Person, One Office: Separation of Powers or Separation of
Personnel?, 79 CORNELL L. REV. 1045, 1156 n.552 (1994) (Technically, the Vice President
also represents the same national constituency [as the President], but those of us who have
worked for a U.S. Vice President know that, in many respects, they represent a constituency of
one. (emphasis added)). But cf. JACK MASKELL, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., R42662, GIFTS TO
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CRS-4 to CRS-5 (Aug. 16, 2012) (The President and
all federal officials are restricted by the Constitution, at Article I, Section 9, clause 8, from
receiving any presents from foreign governments, kings, or princes, without the consent of
the Congress. (emphasis added)).
2013]
315
under the United States), one should look to how Congress used these phrases in its
early statutes.53 Professor Chafetz appears to adhere to Calabresis view.54
53
Steven G. Calabresi, Closing Statement, A Term of Art or the Artful Reading of Terms?,
in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 157-58 (looking to early congressional statutes to
determine original public meaning of a constitutional term).
54
See, e.g., CHAFETZ, supra note 13, at 281 n.86 (taking the position that the phrase
Office . . . under the United States, as used in 1 Stat. 112 (1790), an act of the First
Congress, was used in the same sense as it is used in the Constitution).
Likewise, as opposed to early federal statutes, if one turns to early state constitutional
materials, one arrives at a similar conclusion: officer under this State-language does not reach
the office of governor, i.e., an official at the apex of governmental authority (within a branch
of government). See, e.g., DEL. CONST. of 1792, art. III, 5 (No member of Congress, nor
person holding any office under the United States or this State, shall exercise the office of
Governor. (emphasis added)). This Delaware constitutional provisionenacted some three
years after ratification of the Constitutionwould seem to exclude the office of governor from
the category of office under . . . this State (apparently referring to lesser offices). Such
antebellum materials are quite common; they appear in each and every decade prior to the
Civil War. See, e.g., PA. CONST. of 1790, art. II, 5 (No member of Congress, or person
holding any office under the United States, or this state, shall exercise the office of Governor.
(emphasis added)); KY. CONST. of 1792, art. II, 5 (No member of Congress, or person
holding any office under the United States or this State, shall execute the office of Governor.
(emphasis added)); N.H. CONST. of 1792, 93 (No governor, or judge of the supreme
judicial court, shall hold any office or place under the authority of this state, except such as by
this constitution they are admitted to hold . . . . (emphasis added)); OHIO CONST. of 1802,
art. II, 13 (No member of Congress, or person holding any office under the United States,
or this State, shall exercise the office of Governor. (emphasis added)); IND. CONST. of 1816,
art. IV, 5 (No member of Congress, or person holding any office under the [U]nited States,
or this State, shall exercise the office of Governor, or Lieutenant Governor. (emphasis
added)); ME. CONST. of 1820, art. V, 5 (No person holding any office or place under the
United States, this State, or any other power, shall exercise the office of Governor. (emphasis
added)); MICH. CONST. of 1835, art. V, 16 (No member of congress, nor any other person
holding office under the United States, or this state, shall execute the office of Governor.
(emphasis added)); N.J. CONST. of 1844, art. V, 8 (No member of Congress, or person
holding an office under the United States, or this State, shall exercise the office of
Governor . . . . (emphasis added)); CAL. CONST. of 1849, art. V, 12 (No person shall,
while holding any office under the United States, or this State, exercise the office of Governor,
except as hereinafter expressly provided. (emphasis added)); OR. CONST. of 1857, art. V, 3
(No member of Congress, or person holding any office under the United States, or under this
State, or under any other power, shall fill the office of Governor, except as may be otherwise
provided in this Constitution. (emphasis added)); The State ex rel. Ragsdale v. Walker, 33
S.W. 813, 814 (Mo. 1896) (Macfarlane, J.) (An office under the state must be one created by
the laws of the state. The incumbent must be governed by state laws and must exercise his
powers and perform his duties in obedience to a statute of the state [Tillman addingwhich
would seem to exclude the governor]. (emphasis added)). But, contrary authority also exists.
See, e.g., PA. CONST. of 1790, art. IV, 3 (The Governor, and all other civil officers, under
this commonwealth, shall be liable to impeachment for any misdemeanor in office . . . .
(emphasis added)); OHIO CONST. of 1802, art. I, 24 (The Governor, and all other civil
officers under this State, shall be liable to impeachment for any misdemeanor in office . . . .
(emphasis added)); Willis v. Potts, 377 S.W.2d 622, 628 (Tex. 1964) (Hamilton & Steakley,
JJ., dissenting) (Without exception every jurisdiction has declared a municipal office not to
be an office under the state unless it is one created by the Constitution or statutes, its powers
and duties defined by statute, or an office created by some other authority such as a
316
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In 1790, the First Congress enacted an anti-bribery statute. The statute stated:
That if any person shall, directly or indirectly, give any sum or sums of
money, or any other bribe, present or reward, or any promise, contract,
obligation or security, for the payment or deliver of any money, present or
reward, or any other thing to obtain or procure the opinion, judgment or
decree of any judge or judges of the United States, in any suit,
controversy, matter or cause depending before him or them, and shall be
thereof convicted . . . and the judge or judges who shall in any wise
accept . . . shall be fined and imprisoned . . . and shall forever be
disqualified to hold any office of honor, trust or profit under the United
States.55
municipality, but upon which there is imposed by statute certain state duties. (emphasis
added)); cf., e.g., S.C. CONST. of 1802, art. II, 2, cl. 3 (No person shall hold the office of
governor and any other office or commission . . . either in this State, or under any State, or the
United States . . . at one and the same time. (emphasis added)).
55
An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States, ch. 9, 21, 1
Stat. 112, 117 (1790) (emphasis added). Professor Chafetz cites this very statute in his own
publication. See CHAFETZ, supra note 13, at 281 n.86. Notice that the language of the statute
is identical to that found in the Removal and Disqualification Clauseoffice of honor, trust or
profit under the United States.
There is some dispute as to whether or not this statute works a removal or just a
disqualification in regard to future office-holding. Compare, e.g., REPORT OF THE NATIONAL
COMMISSION ON JUDICIAL DISCIPLINE AND REMOVAL, 152 F.R.D. 265, 289 (Aug. 2, 1993)
(Although it might seem that disqualification from office would include disqualification from
the office one occupies at the time of conviction, Congress in 1790 apparently regarded
disqualification and removal as distinct.), ELIZABETH B. BAZAN, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., 92905A, DISQUALIFICATION OF FEDERAL JUDGES CONVICTED OF BRIBERYAN EXAMINATION OF
THE ACT OF APRIL 30, 1790 AND RELATED ISSUES CRS-Summary (1992) (However, the
stronger arguments appear to militate against the use of the 1790 bribery statutes
disqualification provision as support for the constitutional sufficiency of statutory [removal]
mechanisms [as an alternative to impeachment].), id. at CRS-19 ([I]t would seem, on
reflection, that the stronger arguments militate against reliance upon the passage of the 1790
act as a foundation upon which to build an argument that statutory mechanisms for removal of
federal judges, supplementary to the impeachment process, would pass constitutional
muster.), and Pfander, supra note 9, at 1233 (asserting that the statute only limits future
office-holding), with AMAR, supra note 9, at 222-23 (asserting that the 1790 Act worked a
removal), Laurence Claus, Constitutional Guarantees of the Judiciary: Jurisdiction, Tenure,
and Beyond, 54 AM. J. COMP. L. 459, 478 n.92 (2006) (The First Congress apparently sought
to provide for automatic removal of judges convicted by a criminal jury of bribery, without
individualized impeachment by the House and conviction by a super-majority of the Senate.),
Gerhardt, supra note 15, at 42-43 ([The 1790 Act] suggests that at least under certain
circumstances the First Congress did not regard impeachment as the sole means of removing
federal judges. (footnote omitted)), Prakash & Smith, supra note 9, at 122 (concluding the
Act contemplated that ordinary courts could remove judges from office for their
misbehaviorin this case the taking of bribes), Paul Taylor, Congresss Power to Regulate
the Federal Judiciary: What the First Congress and the First Federal Courts Can Teach
Todays Congress and Courts, 37 PEPP. L. REV. 847, 901 (2010) (The terms holding, as
used in the Pennsylvania Constitution, and hold, as used in the Crimes Act of 1790, would
seem by their plain meaning to apply to offices contemporaneously held as well as future
offices. (footnote omitted)), and Maria Simon, Note, Bribery and Other Not So Good
2013]
317
This statute works a statutory disqualification: any judicial officer convicted of

the specified crimes is disqualified from holding any office . . . under the United
States. Does the statute disqualify such persons from holding the positions of
representative or senator? The consensus view, rooted in the text of the Constitution,
is no: congresspersons are not officers.56 So the disqualification does not go so
Behavior: Criminal Prosecution as a Supplement to Impeachment of Federal Judges, 94
COLUM. L. REV. 1617, 1652 (1994) (taking the position that the most sensible reading of
these early statutes indicates that the penalty of disqualification necessarily included removal
when applied to a sitting officer). But cf. Chandler v. Judicial Council of the 10th Cir. of the
U.S., 398 U.S. 74, 141-42 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting) (While judges, like other people, can
be tried, convicted, and punished for crimes, no word, phrase, clause, sentence, or even the
Constitution taken as a whole, gives any indication that any judge was ever to be partly
disqualified or wholly removed from office except by the admittedly difficult method of
impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate.
Such was the written guarantee in our Constitution of the independence of the judiciary, and
such has always been the proud boast of our people.); Shane, supra note 11, at 239 n.118
(Moreover, if Professor Amar is correct in suggesting that [judicial] removal through
criminal processes is permissible because of considerations unique to criminal law, then the
Act of 1790even under the Gerhardt interpretationwould not necessarily be probative as
to the permissibility of removal through civil processes.). Nothing in this Article turns on
whether this statute effectuated a removal.
56
See infra notes 89-90 (illustrating the modern consensus, through the positions of
Professors Akhil Amar, Vikram Amar, and Josh Chafetz). But see Hills, supra note 23 (The
First Congress, for instance, seemed to believe that the qualifications in the Qualifications
[C]lause did not exclude its power to add qualifications: it enacted a statute that barred from
any office of trust or profit any person who had been convicted of accepting or offering a
bribe. Such a statute added a qualification for congressional seats (which are offices of trust
or profit) not enumerated by the Qualifications clause. (internal citation omitted)); supra
note 42 (collecting authority suggesting that members of Congress are officers, at least in
regard to certain constitutional provisions). But see also David P. Currie, The Constitution in
Congress: The Second Congress, 1791-1793, 90 NW. U. L. REV. 606, 624-25 (1996)
(Article I, Section 3 provides that judgment in impeachment cases may include
disqualification from any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States, Article I,
Section 9 [provides] that no one holding such an office may accept gifts, emoluments, or titles
from any foreign state without congressional consent. It is hard to find anything in the text or
purpose of either of these provisions to justify construing them to apply only to executive and
judicial officers. Thus, it is difficult to say that the Constitution adopts a single meaning of
the term office or officer; each clause employing these terms must be interpreted according
to its own context, history, and purpose. (footnotes omitted)).
The reason that
Representatives and Senators are not considered officers is rooted in the text of the
Constitution. See U.S. CONST. art. 1, 6, cl. 2 (Incompatibility Clause: [N]o Person holding
any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance
in Office. (emphasis added)); U.S. CONST. art. II, 1, cl. 2 (Elector Incompatibility Clause:
[N]o Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the
United States, shall be appointed an Elector. (emphasis added)). In neither case is the
office . . . under the United States-language preceded by the word other. The consensus
view is that the absence of the word other indicates that Members of Congress are not
Officers under the United States. However, Professor Raoul Berger has expressly rejected this
type of text-sensitive analysis. See BERGER, supra note 42. It is worth remarking that the
Impeachment Clause states: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United
States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason,
Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors . . . . U.S. CONST. art. II, 4. Here too, the
word other does not precede Officers of the United States. This would seem to indicate, by
318
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far. But what about the presidency and vice presidency? If the presidency and vice
presidency are officers . . . under the United States, then this statute is deeply
problematic because it purports to add, by statute, to the qualifications for
constitutionally established elected federal offices. And, as Professor Chafetz has
noted in his own publications, that result is unconstitutional: Congress has no such
power.57
a parity of logic, that the President and Vice President are not Officers of the United States.
But those in the consensus have not adopted this position. What accounts for this strange
inconsistency?
57
See supra note 23 (citing U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) and
Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 550 (1969), but also noting scholarly counter-authority);
AMAR, supra note 9, at 529 n.22 (same); CHAFETZ, supra note 13, at 171, 280 n.68, 281
nn.81, 86, 282 n.90. Likewise, Chafetz quotes Justice Story for the proposition that officers of
the United States extends to executive and judicial officers only. Id. at 280 n.68 (quoting
Storys Commentaries). However, Story expressly excludes the President and Vice President
from this category. See 1 STORY, COMMENTARIES, supra note 9, 791, at 559-60 ([C]ivil
officers of the United States meant such, as derived their appointment from, and under the
national government, and not those persons, who, though members of the government, derived
their appointment from the states, or the people of the states. In this view, the enumeration of
the president and vice president, as impeachable officers, was indispensable; for they derive,
or may derive, their office from a source paramount to the national government. And the
[Impeachment Clause] of the [C]onstitution . . . does not even affect to consider them officers
of the United States. It says, the president, vice-president, and all civil officers (not all other
civil officers) shall be removed, &c. The language of the clause, therefore, would rather lead
to the conclusion, that they were enumerated, as contradistinguished from, rather than as
included in the description of, civil officers of the United States. (emphasis added)); cf. THE
FEDERALIST NO. 67 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 360-62 (explaining that Senators,
and by implication Representatives, are not officers of the United States under the
Appointments Clause). But compare Steven G. Calabresi, Closing Statement, A Term of Art
or the Artful Reading of Terms?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 154-55 (Original
meaning is thus about what the ordinary citizen on the street would have thought words
meant. It is not about the understanding of someone as erudite [!] as Justice Story. (emphasis
added)), with Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 391 (1798) (Chase, J.) (The expressions
ex post facto laws, are technical, they had been in use long before the Revolution, and had
acquired an appropriate meaning, by Legislators, Lawyers, and Authors.). Strangely, I have
seen any number of journal articles by Professor Calabresi citing Storys Commentaries
approvingly, and until 2008, never once warning the reader that Storys views might be too
erudite. Likewise, post-2008, Professor Calabresi returned to form and continued to cite
Storys Commentaries approvingly. See, e.g., Steven G. Calabresi & Christopher S. Yoo,
Remove Morrison v. Olson, 62 VAND. L. REV. EN BANC 103, 106 n.16 (2009). What precisely
should we make of Calabresis claim that Story was too erudite? Has anyone in the entire
history of Anglo-American law ever sought to reject an otherwise respectable source on such
a ground?
Moreover, Presidents are not appointed; rather, they are elected or chosen. U.S. CONST.
art. II, 1, cl. 1 (mandating presidential selection by elect[ion] of the electors), amended by
U.S. CONST. amend. XII (mandating elector participation by votes, and presidential
selection by choice of the House when electoral college mode fails). In other words,
Presidents, textually, do not fit into the framework of the Appointments Clause. For that
reason, arguably, Presidents are not officers of the United States. Cf. JOINT COMMITTEE TO
EXAMINE THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL POSITION RELATING TO OFFICE OF PROFIT 9 (New
Delhi, Lok Sabha Secretariat Dec. 22, 2008), available at http://tinyurl.com/4xenbte (An
2013]
319
To put it another way, this statute could be understood in one of two ways.
Under the first view, the scope of offices . . . under the United States, the scope of
disqualification would attach exclusively to statutory and appointed offices: that is,
those offices filled under the aegis of the Appointments Clause58 (and under the aegis
of the Inferior Office Appointments Clause,59 and under the aegis of the Recess
Appointments Clause60), and under the aegis of the House Officers Clause and the
Senate Officers Clause.61 This interpretation would exclude the presidency and vice
presidency, senators, and representatives, elected or constitutionally mandated
offices, from the category Office . . . under the United States.
The second possibility is that the presidency and vice presidency are offices . . .
under the United States, and, if so, then the statute is unconstitutionally overbroad
when applied in those situations. But why go there? Is not the former view the
better view, that is, under the avoidance canon, the statute is constitutional precisely
because Congress chose language that does not incorporate the presidency and vicepresidency?
I suppose Professor Calabresi (or others) might argue that the latter or second
view is the correct view (as a matter of the original public meaning of the statute in
question), and that the choice of language leading to an unconstitutional result (as
would be the case under the second view) was an oversight62 on Congresss part.
In other words, the First Congress just was not careful enough; the members did not
see the implications in the language they chose and enacted into law. Those long
gone members were d-u-m-b; we, by contrast, prove our great wisdom by realizing
their error, by noticing their oversight. I suppose that is possible. But the claim of
oversight (when applied exclusively to others), when repeated too often, becomes
constitutional interpretation by narcissism. The simpler view, applying Ockhams
razor, is not that the First Congress passed an unconstitutional statute, and the
modern consensus right, but that the First Congress chose language that passed
constitutional muster, and the modern consensus wrong.63 The constant claim of
office of profit is a term used in a number of national constitutions to refer to executive
appointments. (emphasis added)).
58
U.S. CONST. art. II, 2, cl. 2.
59
Id.
60
U.S. CONST. art. II, 2, cl. 3 (The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies
that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire
at the End of their next Session.).
61
U.S. CONST. art. I, 2, cl. 5 (The House of Representatives shall ch[oo]se their
Speaker and other Officers . . . .); U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 5 (The Senate shall ch[oo]se
their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or
when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.).
62
See Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the
President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 145 (affirming that historically
presidents and vice presidents have not received commissions, and denominating such failure
an oversight).
63
See, e.g., Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198, 217 (2006) (Scalia, J., dissenting)
(Ockham is offended by todays decision, even if no one else is.); Chauffeurs, Teamsters &
Helpers, Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558, 575 (1990) (Brennan, J., concurring in part
and concurring in the judgment) (The time has come to borrow William of Occams razor
320
[Vol. 61:285
oversight would simply reduce interpretevism to a series of unfalsifiable

hypotheses or pseudo-religious faith claimsinteresting, but intellectually wholly
unsatisfying, or nearly so.
At a normative level, should not we interpret constitutional and statutory
disqualifications narrowlythereby preserving the widest scope for democratic
action? Is it not more than merely noteworthy that the Constitution included express
language in the Impeachment Clause reaching the President and Vice President,64 but
and sever this portion of our analysis.); Commodity Futures Trading Commn v. Zelener, 373
F.3d 861, 868 (7th Cir. 2004) (Easterbrook, J.) (Best to take Occams Razor and slice off
needless complexity.); Raoul Berger, Response, Impeachment: A Countercritique, 49 WASH.
L. REV. 845, 856 (1974) (Ever since Ockham, scientists have preferred the simpler to the
more complicated explanation.); Steven G. Calabresi, The Tradition of the Written
Constitution: A Comment on Professor Lessigs Theory of Translation, 65 FORDHAM L.
REV. 1435, 1449 (1997) (explaining that Lessigs translation theory fails the test of
Ockhams razor because it is not necessary to explain the changes that Professor Lessig seeks
to explain).
64
Just as I argue in this Article that the President and Vice President are not within the
ambit of the Officers . . . under the United States-type language in the Removal and
Disqualification Clause, I argued in 2009 that the President does not fall within the ambit of
the Office under the United States-type language within the Incompatibility Clause and the
Ineligibility Clause. See U.S. CONST. art. I, 6, cl. 2 (No Senator or Representative shall,
during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority
of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have
been [i]ncreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States,
shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office. (the Ineligibility Clause
(in italics) and the Incompatibility Clause) (bold added)); Tillman, Why Our Next President
May Keep His or Her Senate Seat: A Conjecture on the Constitution's Incompatibility Clause,
supra note 50 passim. Professor Prakash responded:
Presidents and Vice Presidents could freely accept presents, emoluments, offices and
titles from foreign states because the constitutional bar [in the Foreign Emoluments
Clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8] applies only to offices under the United States,
and, according to Mr. Tillman, those two offices are not [offices] under the United
States. But the provision barring Presidents from accepting foreign emoluments was
arguably added to prevent Presidents from being corrupted by foreign bribes, as
occurred when Charles II accepted money from Frances Louis XIV.
Prakash, supra note 45, at 149-50 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted) (citing 2 THE
RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, at 68-69 (Max Farrand ed., 1911)
[hereinafter FARRANDS RECORDS] (reporting Gouverneur Morriss statement at the
Philadelphia Convention)); see also Prakash & Smith, supra note 9, at 84 (A close
examination of the text suggests that members of Congress are not the sorts of civil Officers
to which Article IIs impeachment provision applies at all . . . . (emphasis added)). Compare
BERGER, supra note 42, at 226 n.11 (If a Senator holds no office [under the United States],
it follows that he is exempt from th[e] prohibition [of the Foreign Emoluments Clause], so that
we may have a Duke of Oklahoma serving in the Senate[]a position methodologically
identical to Prakashs, supra, but a position I doubt he would accept), WHARTON, supra
note 52, at 270 (If a Senator holds no office of profit or trust under the United States, it is
lawful for him to accept a present title or office from any King or any foreign state. Can it be
possible that a public functionary, of all others the peculiar object of this jealous restriction, is,
in fact, the sole object of exemption from its operation? (quoting Congressman James A.
Bayard, Sr.s speech on January 3, 1799 for the House managers at the Blount Impeachment
trial before the Senate)), Francis Paschal, The Constitution and Habeas Corpus, 1970 DUKE
2013]
321
L.J. 605, 613 n.26 (affirming that the Foreign Emoluments Clause limits all branches of the
government (emphasis added)), Teachout, supra note 24 (affirming that members of
Congress are subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause), Teachout, infra note 66 passim
(same), Paul R. Verkuil, Separation of Powers, the Rule of Law and the Idea of Independence,
30 WM. & MARY L. REV. 301, 310 & n.45 (1989) (Other provisions of [A]rticle I prevent
members of Congress from assuming or receiving gifts, titles or offices that might create
conflicts of interest in the personal bias or interest sense. (citing the Foreign Emoluments
Clause)), and Adrian Vermeule, The Constitutional Law of Official Compensation, 102
COLUM. L. REV. 501, 510 (2002) (asserting that the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to
all federal officeholders and describing the Clause as one of a number of limited
anticorruption provisions (emphasis added)), with AMAR, supra note 9, at 182 (The
[Presidential Emoluments] [C]lause also prohibited individual states from greasing a
presidents palm, and the more general language of Article I, section 9 barred all federal
officers, from the president on down, from accepting any present or Emolument of any
kind whatever from a foreign government without special congressional consent. (emphasis
added)), WALTER BERNS, DEMOCRACY AND THE CONSTITUTION: ESSAYS 139-40 (2006) (stating
that the president is ineligible to serve as an elector because he holds an Office of Trust or
Profit under the United States), LAWRENCE G. KRAUS, THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE: REFORM
THROUGH THE CONSTITUTION 40 (1987) (Who besides the President and the Vice President
holds an office of trust?), FURMAN SHEPPARD, THE CONSTITUTIONAL TEXT-BOOK 342,
at 146-47 (Philadelphia, Sower, Barnes & Potts 1855) (asserting that the Foreign Emoluments
Clause applies to the President), and Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Constitutional Power to
Interpret International Law, 118 YALE L.J. 1762, 1772 (2009) (implying that the President
falls under the scope of the Foreign Emoluments Clause). But see GLENNON, supra note 13,
at 23 (What constitutes an office of trust or profit is not clear.).
It appears to me that Professor Prakash misunderstands the source he cites. Gouverneur
Morris made his speech referencing the Chares II-Louis XIV incident during discussion on the
clauses relating to impeachment, and not during debate on either the Foreign Emoluments
Clause or on the Incompatibility and Ineligibility Clauses. E.g., 2 FARRANDS RECORDS, supra
at 68-69 ([Gouverneur Morris] was now sensible of the necessity of impeachments, if the
Executive was to continue for any time in office. . . . One would think the King of England
well secured agst [sic] bribery. . . . Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV. The Executive
ought therefore to be impeachable . . . .); see also, e.g., 3 FARRANDS RECORDS, supra at 251
(reproducing General Pinckneys floor statement to the South Carolina legislature, on
January 16, 1788, discussing the Charles II-Louis XIV incident in relation to impeachment
powers and to the treaty-making power); cf., e.g., Berger, supra note 49, at 430 n.168 ([T]he
bribe Louis paid to Charles . . . came out in the impeachment of Danby . . . . (emphasis
added)). The Impeachment Clause uses express language in regard to the President and Vice
President.
By contrast, no such express language naming the President and Vice President appears in the
Incompatibility Clause, in the Ineligibility Clause, or in the Removal and Disqualification
Clause, and Professor Prakash puts forward no evidence that the Charles II-Louis XIV
incident was on anyones mind during debate on those clauses, clauses which merely make
use of Officers under the United States-type language. Like the Incompatibility Clause, the
Ineligibility Clause, and the Removal and Disqualification Clause, the Foreign Emoluments
Clause also makes use of Officers under the United States-type language. See U.S. CONST.
art. I, 9, cl. 8 ([N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without
the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind
whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. (emphasis added)). When the Foreign
Emoluments Clause was debated at the Philadelphia Convention, the discussion focused on
the dangers associated with foreign powers bribing our ambassadors, particularly while posted
abroad. Cf. Application of the Emoluments Clause to Part-Time Consultant for the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, 1986 OLC LEXIS 66, at *6 (1986) (Cooper, Asst. Atty Gen.)
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([A]lthough the possibility of corruption and foreign influence of foreign ministers

apparently was of particular concern to the Framers, they expressly chose not to limit the
prohibition on accepting emoluments from foreign governments to foreign ministers.
(emphasis added)). Thus there was no strong reason to institute language in the Foreign
Emoluments Clause affecting Presidents, Vice Presidents, or members of Congress.
Moreover, I have not found a trace of debate or discussion at the Philadelphia Convention or
in the ratifying debates on the Charles II-Louis XIV incident, in relation to the Foreign
Emoluments Clause, the clause which interests us here, and Professor Prakash has put no such
evidence forward. See ELLIOTS DEBATES, supra note 10 passim; 2 FARRANDS RECORDS,
supra passim. The entirety of his evidence relates to debate on impeachment related
provisions, and the Impeachment Clause, unlike the Foreign Emoluments Clause, uses express
language to reach the President and Vice President. This would seem to substantially, if not
entirely, undercut Prakashs historical argument. See Applicability of Emoluments Clause to
Employment of Government Employees by Foreign Public Universities, 1994 OLC LEXIS
52, at *6 n.4 (1994) (Dellinger, Asst. Atty Gen.) (The [Foreign] Emoluments Clause builds
upon practices that had developed during the period of the Confederation. It was the practice
of Louis XVI [not Louis XIV] of France to give presents to departing ministers who signed
treaties with France. (emphasis added)); id. (reporting incident involving John Jay and the
King of Spain); President Reagans Ability to Receive Retirement Benefits from the State of
California, 5 Op. O.L.C. 187, 1981 OLC LEXIS 33, at *4 (1981) (Simms, Depy Asst. Atty
Gen.) (noting that the [Foreign Emoluments] [C]lause had been prompted by the gift of a
snuff box by the King of France to Benjamin Franklin, then Ambassador to France
(emphasis added)); 3 FARRANDS RECORDS, supra at 327 (reporting Edmund Randolphs
position at the Virginia ratifying convention, on June 17, 1788, who noted that the King of
France had given a gift to the American ambassador during the Revolution); Gary J. Edles,
Service on Federal Advisory Committees: A Case Study of the OLCs Little-Known [Foreign]
Emoluments Clause Jurisprudence, 58 ADMIN. L. REV. 1, 4-5 (2006) (Its inclusion in the
Constitution was occasioned by a gift of a snuffbox to Benjamin Franklin when he was the
American ambassador to France during the period of confederation. Other American envoys
similarly received gifts from foreign monarchs, and the Continental Congress authorized, or at
least acquiesced in, the acceptance of these gifts. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted));
Teachout, supra note 24, at 361, 410 n.302 (suggesting that the clause arose in the context of
gifts from Louis XVI to Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee); cf. The Constitutionality of
Cooperative International Law Enforcement Activities Under the Emoluments Clause, 20 Op.
O.L.C. 346, 1996 OLC LEXIS 17, at *4-5 (1996) (Schroeder, Acting Asst. Atty Gen.) (The
Emoluments Clause was intended to protect foreign ministers, ambassadors, and other
officers of the United States from undue influence and corruption by foreign governments.
(emphasis added)).
One is genuinely left wondering upon what facts the modern consensus is based. See Citizens
United v. Fed. Election Commn, 130 S. Ct. 876, 948 n.51 (2010) (Stevens, J., dissenting)
(The notion that Congress might lack the authority to distinguish foreigners from citizens in
the regulation of electioneering would certainly have surprised the Framers, whose obsession
with foreign influence derived from a fear that foreign powers and individuals had no basic
investment in the well-being of the country. (quoting Teachout, supra note 24, at 393
n.245)); 3 WILLIAM LAWRENCE, DECISIONS OF THE FIRST COMPTROLLER IN THE DEPARTMENT
OF THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES 444 (Washington, Government Printing Office
1882) (suggesting that the Foreign Emoluments Clause extends to members of Congress);
AMAR, supra note 9, at 182 (asserting that the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to the
President); Teachout, supra note 24, at 366 (asserting, without citations to any authority, that
[f]oreign corruption of the Executive was a concern [of the Framers] . . . as we saw in the
Foreign Gifts Clause); id. at 364 (asserting, without citation to any authority, that the Foreign
Emoluments Clause applies to members of Congress, and thereby embracing a position akin
to that of Raoul Berger, supra note 42); id. at 361-62 (suggesting that the Foreign Emoluments
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323
Clause reached Senators); id. at 362 (misquoting the Foreign Emoluments Clause as extending
to Office[s] of Project [?] or Trust under [the United States]a phrase nowhere appearing
in the Constitution); Teachout, infra note 66 passim (taking the position that the Foreign
Emoluments Clause reaches the President (and, by implication, the Vice President), members
of Congress, and even state officials!); Zephyr Teachout, The Historical Roots of Citizens
United v. FEC: How Anarchists and Academics Accidentally Created Corporate Speech
Rights, 5 HARV. L. & POLY REV. 163 (2011) (asserting that the Framers (or, perhaps, merely
Hamilton) believed that the President could be corrupted by foreign temptations); Zephyr
Teachout, Original Intent: How the Founding Fathers Would Clean Up K Street,
DEMOCRACY: A J. OF IDEAS, Winter 2009, at 44, 49, available at
http://www.democracyjournal.org/11/6666.php (affirming that the Foreign Emoluments
Clause precluded federal officialswithout a special dispensation from Congressfrom
receiving gifts of any kind whatever from any foreign party. (emphasis added)); cf. Hills,
supra note 23 (describing congressional seats as offices of trust or profit). But see 8
ANNALS OF CONG., supra note 42, at 1592-93 (reporting May 4, 1798 debate, i.e., the first
recorded congressional debate on the Foreign Emoluments Clause, with Representative Albert
Gallatin arguing that officers stand on a different ground from members of Congress); THE
LETTERS OF LAFAYETTE TO WASHINGTON 1777-1799, at 347-48 (Louis Gottschalk ed., 1976)
(reproducing March 17, 1790, letter from Lafayette, then an officer of the French government,
giving the key to the Bastille to Washington). Washington never sought congressional
consent, under the aegis of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, to keep the key, which is some
indication that Washington did not believe that the President was subject to the clause, i.e.,
that the presidency was not an officer . . . under the United States. However, Professor
Prakash rejects the inferences I draw from the incident involving the key to the Bastille. He
reads the Lafayette letter as a personal gift to Washington and suggests that nothing in the
letter put Washington (or, apparently, anyone else) on notice that the gift was from a foreign
government and would, therefore, fall under the aegis of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. See
Prakash, supra note 45, at 145-46. Prakashs position is both puzzling and somewhat
overwrought. Id. at 146 (Had Mr. Tillman dug deeper . . . .which, although not ad
hominem, seems to casually personalize what should be, in my view, a fair minded academic
inquiry). First, the gift was delivered to Washington at the capital, not at his home in Mt.
Vernon. Second, all contemporaneous newspaper accounts represent the gift as a gift to the
President, not to him personally. See, e.g., Philadelphia, 12 August, FED. GAZETTE &
PHILADELPHIA DAILY ADVERTISER, Aug. 12, 1790, at 2 (Last week the key of the Bastille,
accompanied with a fine drawing of that famous building, was presented to the President of
the United States, by John Rutledge, [J]un[.], Esq. to whose care they were committed by the
illustrious patriot the Marquis de la Fayette . . . .); New-York, August 10, PA. PACKET &
DAILY ADVERTISER, Aug. 13, 1790, at 2 (same). Third, Lafayettes letter to Washington
suggests that the key came into Lafayettes possession as a result of his order[ing] the
destruction of the Bastillewhich seems to indicate that the key was not Lafayettes personal
property, but public property which he was authorized (or so Lafayette thought) to give to
Washington as a gift. See THE LETTERS OF LAFAYETTE, supra at 348 (Give me leave, my
dear General, to present you with a picture of the Bastille just as it looked a few days after I
had ordered its demolition, with the main kea [sic] of that fortress of despotismIt is a tribute
which I owe as a son to my adoptive father . . . . (emphasis added)). Fourth, our modern
concepts of private, personal, and public do not easily map onto the world of 1789. Compare
Prakash, supra note 45, at 146 n.22 (Moreover, that governments always act through their
officers hardly means that every act an officer takes is an act of the government. Officers of
government have personal lives too. (emphasis added) (citing Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681
(1997) (Stevens, J.))), with Nixon v. Admr of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 539 (1977)
(Burger, C.J., dissenting) (Since George Washingtons Presidency, our constitutional
tradition, without a single exception, has treated Presidential papers as the Presidents
personal property. This view has been congressionally and judicially ratified, both as to the
ownership of Presidential papers . . . and, by the practice of Justices as to ownership of their
324
[Vol. 61:285
judicial papers.), To Amend the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949:
Hearing on H.R. 7545, H.R. 8353, H.R. 8416, Hr. 8890, and H.R. 9219 Before the Executive
and Legislative Reorganization Subcomm. of the House Comm. on Expenditures in the
Executive Depts, 81st Cong. 99-100 (1950) (Dr. Wayne C. Grover, Archivist of the United
States: [T]he papersin fact all of the papersaccumulated in the White House by our
Presidents from George Washington to President Herbert Hoover have been removed as
personal papers . . . . It would be at the discretion of the President whether or not he deposited
the papers in the National Archives at all.), and KALT, supra note 14, at 17 ([T]he president
can argue that he is the only person in the government for whom the personal and the official
are linked so inextricably. (emphasis added)). Finally, and most importantly, no anti-bribery
regime could function if the mere representation made by the party giving the gift or bribe,
that is, that the gift or bribe was made in a personal capacity, could take the recipient out of
the purview of the monitoring regime. On these facts, where the status of Lafayettes gift was
ambiguous, best practice would have been to have consulted Congress, assuming the
President fell under the aegis of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. The fact that Washington
did not consult Congress, in regard to this gift or any other gift, is some substantial indication
that he did not believe the Foreign Emoluments Clause applied to him. See, e.g., Calabresi &
Prakash, supra note 48, at 642 n.450 (Moreover, Washington was acutely aware that the
precedents established in the beginning would influence posterity. Accordingly, [President
Washington] devoutly wished that these [Executive Branch] precedents may be fixed on
true principles. (quotation marks omitted) (quoting Washington to Madison correspondence
from May 5, 1789)); Saikrishna Prakash, The Essential Meaning of Executive Power, 2003 U.
ILL. L. REV. 701, 792 n.524 (same). As far as I know, the first President to consult Congress
in regard to a gift and also to receive congressional authority to accept the gift was President
Benjamin Harrison. See J. Res. 39, 54th Cong., 29 Stat. 759 (1896) (authoriz[ing] President
Harrison to accept certain medals presented to him by the Governments of Brazil and Spain
during the term of his service as President of the United States); Applicability of the
Emoluments Clause and the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act to the Presidents Receipt of
the Nobel Peace Prize, 33 Op. O.L.C. 1, 2009 WL 6365082, at *5 n.5, 2009 OLC LEXIS 18,
at *14 n.5 (2009). Practice from the late nineteenth century Benjamin Harrison administration
is hardly strong evidence as to original public meaning.
As to earlier Presidents the record is less than clear. President John Quincy Adams apparently
received, circa 1827, a medal of no intrinsic value from the King of Sweden. I have found no
indication that Adams (or the United States minister to Sweden) asked for or received
congressional consent to accept the gift. It may be that Adams thought no permission was
necessary, as he may have regifted the medal to the United States. Or, perhaps, Adams
thought permission was unnecessary because the medal only had de minimis value. President
Andrew Jackson received a gold medal from the South American revolutionary Simn
Bolvar, President of Colombia. Jackson deposited the medal with Congress and asked for
consent to accept it. It appears that Jackson only received consent from the House.
Subsequently, circa February 9, 1830, the House directed the medal to be deposited with the
State Department. See MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE TWO
HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE TWENTY-THIRD
CONGRESS 258-59 (Washington, Gales & Seaton 1833) (reproducing January 22, 1834 letter
from the Secretary of State to the President explaining, in summary fashion, the history of the
Adams and Jackson medals and how they came into the possession of the State Department);
CALVIN TOWNSEND, ANALYSIS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT 227 (N.Y., Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor &
Co. rev. ed. 1868) (Were a costly present to be made by the Emperor of France or Queen of
England to the President of the United States, he would not be at liberty to accept it on his
own account, though he might in behalf of the people, and have it preserved in the archives of
the nation, as it might seem rude to decline it.).
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no such language appears either in the Constitutions Removal and Disqualification

Clause65 or in Congresss 1790 anti-bribery statute?
Does this statute (in conjunction with all the other evidence mustered to date66)
establish that the President and Vice President are neither officers of the United
65
Again, unlike the Impeachment Clause, there is no express language either in the
Ineligibility Clause or in the Incompatibility Clause reaching either the President or Vice
President. See infra note 64 (quoting the Ineligibility Clause and the Incompatibility Clause).
Should not all such exclusions be interpreted narrowly, thereby preserving the widest domain
for democratic action? Since when do exclusions, incompatibilities, and disqualifications
arise by mere implication?
See infra notes 68 & 75 and accompanying text;
Commonwealth ex rel. Bache v. Binns, 17 Serg. & Rawle 219, 229 (Pa. 1828) ([I]f there was
a doubt upon the subject [of incompatibility between federal and state office], that policy
required a decision affirming the incompatibility of the offices in question. But this court
unanimously answered, no [in a prior case]; and held that the doubt and uncertainty of the
letter [of the law in regard to incompatibility] was to have an operation directly the
reverse. (emphasis added)); THOMAS FALCONER & EDWARD H. FITZHERBERT, CASES OF
CONTROVERTED ELECTIONS, DETERMINED IN COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN THE
SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA 587 (Saunders & Benning 1839)
(reproducing committee debate from disputed Galway election of 1838, where Mr. Austin
(counsel for the sitting member who prevailed) stated: In all cases respecting eligibility,
eligibility is to be aided, and ineligibility ought to be strictly proved. Severe penalties are
imposed by the acts of parliament creating disqualification, and they are not favoured.); 67
C.J.S. Officers 23 (2012) (The courts have a duty to liberally construe words limiting the
right of a person to hold office so that the public may have benefit of choice from all those
who are in fact and in law qualified, and in favor of those seeking to hold office. Ambiguities
should be resolved in favor of eligibility to office, and constitutional and statutory provisions
which restrict the right to hold public office should be strictly construed against ineligibility.
(footnotes omitted)); see also 62 C.J.S. Municipal Corporations 273 (2012) (Statutory or
charter provisions prescribing the qualifications for members in a municipal council are to be
strictly construed, and a person elected or appointed to membership therein should not be
prevented from taking office unless he is clearly ineligible . . . .); 62 C.J.S. Municipal
Corporations 280 (2012) (The proceedings and grounds for removal of a member of a
municipal governing body are controlled by constitutional, statutory, and charter provisions,
which are to be strictly construed. (footnote omitted)); 3 G.M. TREVELYAN, HISTORY OF
ENGLAND 179 (1953) (The [Municipal Corporations] Act of 1835 was more dramatic than
the [Great] Reform Bill [of 1832], for it gave all ratepayers the right to vote for the new
Municipalities. At last the ice-age of English institutional and corporate life had come to an
end . . . . (emphasis added)). Compare Prakash, supra note 45, at 144 (objecting to using
evidence from corporate law field in order to understand public law terms), with Prakash &
Smith, supra note 9, at 107 (using evidence from trust law in order to understand public law
terminology).
66
See, e.g., supra notes 10-13, 42-52; infra note 67 and accompanying text. See generally
IV JOHN BASSETT MOORE, A DIGEST OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 651, at 577 (Washington,
Government Printing Office 1906) (citing State Department material taking the position that
persons holding offices under a state are not subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause); Seth
Barrett Tillman, Opening Statement, Citizens United and the Scope of Professor Teachouts
Anti-Corruption Principle, 107 NW. U. L. REV. 399 (2012), 107 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 1
(2012) (arguing based on other Washington-era precedents that the Office . . . under the
United States language of the Foreign Emoluments Clause does not reach elected federal or
state officials); Seth Barrett Tillman, Closing Statement, The Original Public Meaning of the
Foreign Emoluments Clause: A Reply to Professor Zephyr Teachout, 107 NW. U. L. REV.
COLLOQUY 180 (2013) (same). But see generally Zephyr Teachout, Rebuttal, Gifts, Offices,
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States, nor officers under the United States? I think so.67 But if Professor Chafetz,
and Professors Akhil Amar, Vikram Amar, Steven Calabresi, Saikrishna Prakash,
and Corruption: A Response to Tillman, 107 NW. U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 30 (2012) (arguing
that the Foreign Emoluments Clause reaches federal and state elected officials).
67
See, e.g., Field, supra note 45 (Whether the president and vice-president are officers of
the United States is a subject on which conflicting opinions are held. It is not possible to deal
here at length with . . . that question . . . . (footnote omitted)); see also supra note 45
(collecting sources); infra notes 77-79 (collecting sources). The position that the President
and Vice President are not officers of the United States has deep roots in early and modern
sources. See United States v. Mouat, 124 U.S. 303, 307 (1888) (Unless a person in the
service of the Government, therefore holds his place by virtue of an appointment by the
President, or of one of the courts of justice or heads of Departments authorized by law to
make such an appointment, he is not strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.
(emphasis added)); ROSENBERG, supra note 52, at CRS-7 ([T]he constitutional term civil
office was meant to include only those offices which are created by Congress and subject to
appointment, and not those elective offices established by the Constitution itself. (emphasis
in the original)); PROCEEDINGS OF THE SENATE SITTING FOR THE TRIAL OF WILLIAM W.
BELKNAP, LATE SECRETARY OF WAR, ON THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 130 (Washington, Government Printing Office 1876) (Senator
George Sewell Boutwell stating, on May 27, 1876, [F]or according to the Constitution, as
well as upon the judgment of eminent commentators, the President and Vice-President are not
civil officers); id. at 145 (Senator Newton Booth, from California, stating, on May 27, 1876,
[T]he President is not an officer of the United States. As was tersely said by the Senator
from Massachusetts, [Mr. BOUTWELL,] He is part of the Government.); GOODNOW, supra
note 10, at 225 ([T]he United States Supreme Court has held that no one can be an officer of
the United States government unless he be appointed as the constitution provides, viz., by the
President and Senate, the President alone, one of the United States courts, or the head of an
executive department.); WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED
STATES NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL 297 (5th ed. 1946) (The phraseology [of the
Incompatibility Clause and Elector Incompatibility Clause] suggests that appointment, as
against election, is the essential mark of civil office or even office. In more recent times
both the President and members of Congress appear as elective federal officers, though not as
civil officers, in statutes and judicial decisions.); SILVA, supra note 9, at 135 (The courts
have been especially careful not to enlarge the meaning of the term officer as used in the
Constitution. They have defined an officer of the United States as a person appointed by the
President and the Senate, by the President alone, by the courts of law, or by a department
head. (collecting case law)); SILVA, supra note 10, at 149 (Officers of the United States are
not appointed by electoral colleges. They are appointed by the President and Senate, by the
President alone, by the department heads, or by the courts of law.); 1 JOHN RANDOLPH
TUCKER, THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: A CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF ITS GENESIS,
DEVELOPMENT, AND INTERPRETATION 199(i), at 412-13 (Henry St. George Tucker ed.,
Chicago, Callaghan & Company 1899) (The language of the [Impeachment] [C]lause
indicates that, in a constitutional sense, the President and Vice-President are not civil officers
of the United States, for otherwise the language would have been and other civil officers.);
id. 199(k), at 413 (The President and Vice-President are constitutional officers. Who, then,
were included in the terms civil officers? The meaning of these words is interpreted by the
last clause of [S]ection 3 of [A]rticle II, which just precedes the use of the term civil officers
as subject to impeachment. It explicitly declares that the President shall commission all the
officers of the United States, and these are the officers who, under [A]rticle II, [S]ection 2,
[C]lause 2, are to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate, under the words ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, judges of the
Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, etc.); JAMES WILSON & THOMAS
MKEAN, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 111
2013]
327
(London, J. Debrett et al. 1792) (reproducing James Wilsons December 11, 1787 A.M.
statement to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention: [e]very officer must be nominated solely
and exclusively, by the President (originally published in T. Lloyds Debates)); Luther
Martin, The Genuine Information, Laid Before the Legislature of Maryland, in ROBERT
YATES, SECRET PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONVENTION ASSEMBLED AT
PHILADELPHIA, IN THE YEAR 1787, FOR THE PURPOSE OF FORMING THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 49 (John Lansing, Jr. ed., Louisville, Ky., Alston 1844) ([T]he
President ha[s] the power to nominate all offices . . . . (emphasis added)); Steven G.
Calabresi, The President, the Supreme Court, and the Founding Fathers: A Reply to Professor
Ackerman, 73 U. CHI. L. REV. 469, 480 (2006) (noting that the Constitution of 1787 created a
unitary executive, provided for no executive council, and gave the president the power to
nominate all officers of the United States and the power to make recess appointments
(emphasis added)); Steven G. Calabresi & Gary S. Lawson, The Unitary Executive,
Jurisdiction Stripping, and the Hamdan Opinions: A Textualist Response to Justice Scalia,
107 COLUM. L. REV. 1002, 1021 (2007) (noting that if some of the other Officers of the
United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, are not inferior,
then they must be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senatethe
logic of which would seem to exclude the President and Vice President (emphasis added)); id.
at 1010 (Although the Constitution assumes that there will be officers of the House and
Senate, heads of executive departments (specifically including a Treasury department),
Ambassadors [and] other public Ministers and Consuls, and various other Officers of the
United States, [the Constitution] does not itself create any of these legislative or executive
offices. Rather, it is left to Congress to create (or not to create) these institutions pursuant to
its power to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution
the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of
the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. (emphasis added) (footnotes
omitted)); id. at 1021 (The Appointments Clause does not in any way distinguish the named
officers from all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein
otherwise provided for.); Pergler, supra note 9 (The President and Vice President, being
elective functionaries, are not civil officers of the United States within the meaning of
Article II, Section 4.); Prakash, How the Constitution Makes Subtraction Easy, supra
note 48, at 1871 (Congress may remove, via statute, all officers of the United States, save for
federal judges with good behavior tenure. (emphasis added)). It appears that Professors
Calabresi and Prakash no longer adhere to their prior positions. See Steven G. Calabresi,
Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the President?, in Tillman & Calabresi,
supra note 10, at 141-46 (arguing that the President and Vice President are officers of and/or
under the United States); Steven G. Calabresi, Closing Statement, A Term of Art or the Artful
Reading of Terms?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 154-59 (same); Prakash, supra
note 45 passim (same). See generally supra notes 10 (discussing officers of the United
States), 13 (discussing Officers . . . under the United States), 48 (distinguishing officers of the
United States from Officers . . . under the United States). It is also important to keep in mind
that the technical meaning of officer of the United States, as used in the Appointments Clause,
and elsewhere in the Constitution, is somewhat distinct from the everyday use of that phrase
which merely distinguishes state from federal officeholders. Compare Buckley v. Valeo, 424
U.S. 1, 275 (1976) (White, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ([N]o case in this
Court even remotely supports the power of Congress to appoint an officer of the United States
aside from those officers each House is authorized by Art. I to appoint to assist in the
legislative processes. (emphasis added)), with Steven G. Calabresi, Closing Statement, A
Term of Art or the Artful Reading of Terms?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 155
(Speakers and Committee Chairs are thus not officers of the United States but are only
officers of the House of Representatives or the Senate. Surely [my interlocutor] would not
confound the United States with the House or the Senate! (emphasis added)). Maybe I would
not, but apparently Justice White would, at least depending on context.
328
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etc., remain unconvinced. I must ask, in clear and direct language, what (if
anything) would it take to convince you? Do I need to find a signed letter from a
Framer or Ratifier?
III. IS THIS RESULT ABSURD?
Is it absurd to argue that impeached, convicted, removed, and disqualified
Presidents, Vice Presidents, and civil officers are eligible to hold the presidency?
Some people who have taken the time to privately comment on this Article think
so.68 In other words, those that doubt the position put forward here ask: what is the
As an aside, it is interesting to note that Justice Story appears (although the matter is hardly
free from doubt) to have taken the position that office under the United States, as used in the
Incompatibility Clause, also extended to state office. Compare 1 STORY, COMMENTARIES,
supra note 9, 869, at 635 (noting that the Incompatibility Clause was doubtless founded in
a deference to state jealousy, and a sincere desire to obviate the fears . . . that the general
government would obtain an undue preference over the state governments (emphasis added)
(citing RAWLE, supra note 9, ch. 19, and THE FEDERALIST NO. 56 (James Madison), supra note
4), with RAWLE, supra note 9, ch. 19, at 189 (The [C]onstitution contains no provision
adverting to the [joint] exercise of offices under the United States and separate states at the
same time, by the same persons. (emphasis added)), and THE FEDERALIST NO. 56 (James
Madison), supra note 4, at 306 (affirming that federal legislators may hold simultaneous
membership in their state legislature). But see Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 117 n.25
(noting that Elbridge Gerry took the position in debate in the First Congress that the reach of
Office in the Succession Clause extended beyond federal office to mere state office, and
denominating Gerrys position as implausibl[e]); but cf. Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, The
Objects of the Constitution, 63 STAN. L. REV. 1005, 1014 (2011) (In other words, when the
Constitution restricts the states, it does so expressly, usually with the words No State
shall.). Madisons report of the Federal Conventions debate on this subject lacks his
customary level of confidence and clarity. See 2 FARRANDS RECORDS, supra note 64, at 535
(reporting debate from September 7, 1787, and stating: It seemed to be an objection to [the
Succession Clause] . . . that the Legislature was restrained in the temporary appointment to
officers of the U.S[.] . . . (emphasis added) (emphasis in the original omitted)). Seemed?
68
See also Randall Kennedy, A Natural Aristocracy?, in CONSTITUTIONAL STUPIDITIES,
CONSTITUTIONAL TRAGEDIES 54, 55 n.1 (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Sanford Levinson eds.,
1998) (asserting that a disqualified official cannot become President); Prakash, supra note 45,
at 149 (denominating the position that a disqualified President, Vice President, and officer
remains eligible to serve as President and Vice President as a fairly odd conclusion[] but
supplying no reasoned basis for his intuition); cf. BERGER, supra note 42 (arguing that the
Constitutions use of office and officer embraces Senators and Representatives else a judge
impeached, convicted, and disqualified to hold any office could yet be elected to the
Congress, for a member of Congress would not be a person holding an office); supra
note 42 (collecting authority for the proposition that impeached, convicted, removed, and
disqualified officials are not eligible to sit in Congress); WHARTON, supra note 52, at 270 (If
a Senator holds no office of profit or trust under the United States, it is lawful for him to
accept a present title or office from any King or any foreign state. Can it be possible that a
public functionary, of all others the peculiar object of this jealous restriction, is, in fact, the
sole object of exemption from its operation? (quoting Congressman James A. Bayard, Sr.s
speech on January 3, 1799 for the House managers at the Blount Impeachment trial before the
Senate)). The argument from absurdity does not of necessity lead to the modern consensus
position. Indeed, in that light, Bergers position (i.e., including all elected officials as officers
of the United States) is far more attractive than the position announced by the Amars in 1995
and subsequently embraced in Impeachment and Assassination by Chafetz (i.e., including the
President and Vice President, but not members of Congress, as officers of the United States).
2013]
329
logic, rationale, or normative justification which would limit disqualification to

relatively low ranking appointed office (such as cabinet and subcabinet posts) while
still leaving such persons eligible to hold elective office (such as the presidency and
vice presidency). There are several potential answers to this question.
First, looking for a normative justification may be a mistake. The various
constitutional clauses relating to impeachment represent compromises arising from
both shared and divergent experiences, first as (royal, proprietary, and corporate)
colonies, and later as newly independent states. The legal work product of such
group efforts and compromises may not have any independent justification. This is
particularly true where multiple constitutional provisions, as is the case in regard to
impeachment, are involved.
Second, where a complex institution is not the creation of any single mind or,
even, a single historical or legal epochwhere it is an inherited organic institution
the only justification to be had may be Burkean: viz., if a long enduring institution
conforms to our shared historical experience, then its maintenance (assuming it is
permeable to evolutionary change short of violent revolution) confirms its
usefulness. To believe or search for a more particularistic justification is to fall into
(what Hayek denominated) the constructivist-rationalist fallacy.69
Alternatively, it may be that the Framers and Ratifiers believed that appointed
office posed particular or acute dangers to society, dangers that elected office did
not. In that situation, extending the scope of disqualification exclusively to
appointed or statutory office makes sense. Indeed, the Ineligibility Clause
hardwires this precise distinction into the Constitution. The Ineligibity Clause
precludes certain elected officeholders from subsequently taking appointed (not
elected) office.70 Furthermore, even if the Framers and Ratifiers believed that
Compare, e.g., Arthur Krock, In The Nation; Succession List Now Suits the Politicos The
Officer Dispute Holmes, White and John W. Davis, N.Y. TIMES, July 17, 1945, at 12
(quoting former Solicitor General John W. Davis, who argued Lamar v. United States, 240
U.S. 60 (1916) (Holmes, J.), as stating: While the Lamar case deals with the statute and not
with the Constitution itself, I think it stands for the doctrine that members of Congress are
officers. I dont accept the contrary view that that term is applicable only to those who hold
office by reason of appointment rather than election. (emphasis added)), with Chafetz, supra
note 1 passim, and Amar & Amar, supra note 9 passim. What is the normative rationale for
precluding a disqualified office-holder from holding the presidency (and vice-presidency), but
permitting her to hold a seat in Congress? See supra note 65 and accompanying text; infra
note 75 and accompanying text.
69
See FRIEDRICH A. HAYEK, 2 LAW, LEGISLATION AND LIBERTY passim (1976); see also
EDMUND BURKE, REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE passim (F.G. Selby ed., 1890)
(1790). But see Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the
President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 143 (affirming, without recourse to any
authority, that the whole point of the two houses of the British Parliament was to give the
Lords temporal and spiritual a place in the House of Lords and the commoners their own
distinct housethe House of Commons (emphasis added)).
70
U.S. CONST. art. I, 6, cl. 2 (Ineligibility Clause: No Senator or Representative shall,
during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the
Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof
shall have been [i]ncreased during such time . . . . (emphasis added)); John F. OConnor, The
Emoluments Clause: An Anti-Federalist Intruder in a Federalist Constitution, 24 HOFSTRA L.
REV. 89, 104 (1995) (The Emoluments Clause goes one step further than prohibiting
Members of Congress from holding federal offices that were created or had their emoluments
330
[Vol. 61:285
disqualified former officers posed similar dangers in regard to both appointed and
elected offices, the decision to install such a candidate via election may have
cleansed the decision in a way that mere appointment could not.71 That may be why
increased during the Members current term; it literally proscribes the appointment to such
offices, which in turn makes holding such offices impossible. The key, then, is determining
exactly when a person is appointed to federal office. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)).
See generally Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Election as Appointment: The Tennessee Plan
Reconsidered, 75 TENN. L. REV. 473 (2008); Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Errors, Omissions, and the
Tennessee Plan, 39 U. MEM. L. REV. 85 (2008). On the other hand, some modern
commentators do not appear to be sympathetic to the existence of the appointedofficer/elected-officeholder divide. See Akhil Reed Amar & Josh Chafetz, How the Senate
Dec. 31,
2008,
can
Stop
Blagojevich,
SLATE,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2008/12/how_the_senate_can_
stop_blagojevich.html (Alternatively, we might think of an appointment as an election by
one voter [with Tillman addinga view that, at the very least, fails to discuss the plainly
contrary language of the Ineligibility Clause, supra]. (emphasis added)); Calabresi & Larsen,
supra note 52, at 1083 (listing President George Bush and Vice President Al Gore as persons
recently appointed to executive . . . offices); OConnor, supra at 104 n.73 (arguing that a
future court would hold that the Ineligibility Clause applies to a Senator appointed to fill a
vacant seat in the Senate, notwithstanding the Clause's textual limitation to elected Senators
and Representatives); cf. Currie, supra note 56, at 657 n.96 (Whether the assumption of
presidential powers [by an acting President] under the [Succession] statute would constitute an
appointment to a civil office under the Authority of the United States within this clause is
not clear . . . .); Friedman, supra note 45 (Probably not much weight should be put on the
term appointment . . . .). Indeed, some early materials do support the view that the term
appoint would also encompass election. See, e.g., GA. CONST. of 1789, art. I, 10 ([N]or
shall any [state] senator or representative be elected to any office of profit which shall be
created during his appointment. (emphasis added)). This may very well have been a
scriveners error: transposing election-language with appointment-language. Indeed, less than
ten years later, in the revised state constitution, this language was replaced with language akin
to that appearing in the federal constitution. See GA. CONST. of 1798, art. I, 11 ([N]or shall
any member [of the state legislature], after having taken his seat, be eligible to any of the
aforesaid offices or appointments during the time for which he shall have been elected.). For
another early authority suggesting that appointment-language might encompass election, see
MONROE, supra note 42, at 362 ([Senators] are appointed by the people themselves . . . .).
71
See, e.g., 1 TUCKER, supra note 67, 199(o), at 415 (The impeachment power was
intended to cleanse the government from the presence of worthless and faithless officials, but
not to debar a State from electing whom it pleases to represent it in the [House or Senate].
(emphasis added)); Keith E. Whittington, Bill Clinton was no Andrew Johnson: Comparing
Two Impeachments, 2 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 422, 454 (2000) (For those who sought to remove
Clinton, the goal was to cleanse the presidency, not to weaken it. (emphasis added)); Jack
Chaney, Note, The Constitutionality of Censuring the President, 61 OHIO ST. L.J. 979, 1005
(2000) (The power of impeachment is provided to guard the country against a President who
cannot be trusted; it is a remedial mechanism, designed to cleanse and purify the office.
(emphasis added)); see also Gantler v. Stephens, 965 A.2d 695, 713 (Del. 2009) (Jacobs, J.)
(With one exception, the cleansing effect of such a ratifying shareholder vote is to subject
the challenged director action to business judgment review [which is less demanding than
entire fairness review], as opposed to extinguishing the claim altogether (i.e., obviating all
judicial review of the challenged action). (emphasis added)); id. at 713 n.54 (The only
species of claim that shareholder ratification can validly extinguish is a claim that the
directors lacked the authority to take action that was later ratified. (emphasis added)); Orman
v. Cullman, 794 A.2d 5, 15 (Del. Ch. 2002) (Chandler, C.) (explaining that a decision of a
conflicted board can be ratified by a majority vote of the fully informed disinterested
2013]
331
when Congress raises the salary of a cabinet post, representatives and senators are
precluded from taking that office, during the term for which they were elected, via
appointment. But if Congress raises the salary of the President, the people can elect
a sitting senator to the presidency, notwithstanding the change in salary, and
notwithstanding that the person becomes President during the term for which she
was first elected a senator. The people cleanse the transaction.72
To put it another way, disqualification might be thought of as a decision by the
agent (the elected government of the day) to preclude a would-be office-holder from
holding office, but the decision of the agent does not (permanently) preclude the
principal (the people73 and, perhaps, the states74) from doing otherwise (even against
stockholders); cf. Benihana of Tokyo, Inc. v. Benihana, Inc., 906 A.2d 114, 120 (Del. 2006)
(Berger, J.) (After approval by disinterested directors, courts review the interested transaction
under the business judgment rule . . . .); Teachers Ret. Sys. of La. v. Aidinoff, 900 A.2d 654,
669 (Del. Ch. 2006) (Strine, V.C.) (The informed approval of a conflict transaction by an
independent board majority remains an important cleansing device under our law and can
insulate the resulting decision from fairness review under the appropriate circumstances. For
that device to be given credit, however, the board majority must have acted in an informed
manner. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)); 3 TREVELYAN, supra note 65, at 179 (The
[Municipal Corporations] Act of 1835 was more dramatic than the [Great] Reform Bill [of
1832], for it gave all ratepayers the right to vote for the new Municipalities. At last the iceage of English institutional and corporate life had come to an end . . . . (emphasis added));
Prakash & Smith, supra note 9, at 107 (using evidence from trust law in order to understand
public law terminology).
72
See id. (collecting authority suggesting cleansing rationale); Act of Jan. 17, 1969, Pub.
L. No. 91-1, 83 Stat. 3 (doubling annual presidential compensation from $100,000 to
$200,000). The Democratic Partys presidential candidate in 1972 was George McGovern
who, prior to receiving his partys presidential nomination, had been reelected to the Senate in
1968. Had McGovern prevailed in the Electoral College, who, then or now, believed or
believes he was ineligible? Was the whole country asleep? Admittedly, for the cleansing
rationale to work, the People must have some notice of Congresss intent to raise a future
Presidents salary. Compare AMAR, supra note 9, at 181 (Congress could, however, change
the salary for future presidential termspresumably before anyone could be certain who
would be in office when the new law would take effect.), CHAFETZ, supra note 13, at 178 &
180 (reporting House and Senate precedents holding that the age qualification is determined at
the time the member-elect presents himself to the house to be sworn in, even if that is after the
start of the constitutional term of office, even if as a result a district or state suffers a temporal
loss of representation, but suggesting that a member-elect might be excluded if he had
actively lied about his age to his constituents prior to his election (emphasis added)), and
ADRIAN VERMEULE, MECHANISMS OF DEMOCRACY: INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN WRIT SMALL 31-54
(2007) (discussing the Constitutions frequent use of veil rules), with supra note 71 (noting
that action taken by disinterested directors or stockholders only has cleansing effect on
conflicted board decision-making if the former were informed).
73
See U.S. CONST. amend. IX (The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (emphasis added));
see also Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Response, Against Mix-and-Match Lawmaking, 16 CORNELL
J.L. & PUB. POLY 349, 360 (2007) (describing Members of Congress as agents and noting
that Every two years there comes a new mandate from the principals, and one must seek the
agents views anew. The two houses of the legislature . . . are in this sense unlike people and
unlike states. (emphasis added)).
332
[Vol. 61:285
the expert advice of their ministers or mastersdepending on your point of view).

This normative worldview accounts for why a disqualified former officer remains
free to take state office (including both elective positions and appointed state
officeseach of which is beyond the scope of the Presidents appointment power),
to sit as a member of congress, and to become President or Vice President. It is
Professor Chafetz and others within the academic consensus who, by contrast, have
yet to present any normative case for their position in regard to disqualification: that
it extends to the presidency and vice presidency, but not to state office or
congressional service.75 According to the consensus view, a disqualified former
officer cannot become an Article III district court judge or circuit court judge, but he
is permitted to sit as a Senator and to act in a judicial capacity in Senate trials in
connection with impeachment proceedings.76 Why? Again, according to the
74
See U.S. CONST. amend. X (The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people. (emphasis added)); see also Bruhl, supra note 73, at 360.
75
Chafetz, supra note 1 passim; see also Amar & Amar, supra note 9 passim; supra
notes 65 & 68, and accompanying text.
76
See Prakash & Smith, supra note 9, at 81-82 ([The impeachment] provisions were
absolutely necessary to invest the House and Senate with nonlegislative authority. In the
absence of the impeachment provisions, there would have been no way that the House would
have enjoyed a judicial power to indict and an executive power to prosecute. Likewise, but
for the grant of power, the Senate would not have any judicial authority to try impeachments.
(emphasis added) (footnote omitted)); cf. AMAR, supra note 9, at 186 n.* (In effect, the veto
provisions of Article I, [S]ection 7 gave certain legislative powers to the president, and the
impeachment provisions of Article I, [S]ections 2 and 3 conferred certain judicial powers
upon Congress.).
Characterizing Senate trial proceedings or House impeachment
proceedings as an exercise of judicial authority is contestable. See, e.g., Mecham v. Gordon,
751 P.2d 957, 962 (Ariz. 1988) (Feldman, V.C.J.) (explaining that impeachment is a
uniquely legislative and political function. It is not judicial.). Whether one considers Senate
action on impeachment as judicial or legislative depends on whether one looks predominantly
to the character of the action taken (judicial), or to the institutional history of the actor taking
the action (legislative). See R. v Richards (Ex parte Fitzpatrick & Browne) (1955) 92 CLR
157, 167 (Austl.) (Dixon, C.J.) ([T]hroughout the course of English history there has been a
tendency to regard th[e] [power of a house of Parliament to jail a private person for contempt]
as not strictly judicial but as belonging to the legislature, rather as something essential or, at
any rate, proper for its protection. This is not the occasion to discuss the historical grounds
upon which these powers and privileges attached to the [United Kingdom] House of
Commons. It is sufficient to say that they were regarded by many authorities as proper
incidents of the legislative function, notwithstanding the fact that considered more
theoreticallyperhaps one might even say, scientificallythey belong to the judicial
sphere.); see also Atkins v. United States, 556 F.2d 1028, 1066 (Ct. Cl. 1977) (per curiam)
([I]t is fitting to consider how powers are constitutionally apportioned among the three
branches. However, a workable categorization has eluded even the most perspicacious of
minds . . . . (citing THE FEDERALIST NO. 37, supra note 4)), disagreement on other grounds
recognized by, Hatter v. United States, 64 F.3d 647 (Fed. Cir. 1995); THE FEDERALIST NO. 37
(James Madison), supra note 4, at 195 (Experience has instructed us that no skill in the
science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty,
its three great provinces, the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and
powers of the different legislative branches.); James M. Landis, Constitutional Limits on the
Congressional Power of Investigation, 40 HARV. L. REV. 153, 156 (1926) (Legislative power
unhappily fails to be either a word of art or a self-defining concept. Like judicial power, it
2013]
333
consensus view, a disqualified former officer cannot become President, but he may
sit as a Senator and make determinations in regard to treaties and appointments
core executive activity. Again, one must ask, why? What is the logic, rationale, or
normative justification for the consensus position?
The position I put forward here, the so-called absurd position, is a world view
very different from that taught in legal academia today. I admit that this view is
counter-intuitive; it cuts squarely against the ahistorical, but dominant, separation of
powers theme77 (or cult78) at the core of our modern jurisprudenceat least as that
summarizes the history of an institution of government for any particular period of time. It
did so in 1789.). But cf. Marshall v. Gordon, 243 U.S. 521, 547 (1917) (White, C.J.)
(concluding that the the implied power to deal with contempt [is] ancillary to the legislative
power and is not judicial authority); Gary Lawson, Delegation and Original Meaning, 88
VA. L. REV. 327, 342 (2002) (The terms legislative, executive, and judicial meant
something to Madison, even if he could not articulate precisely (or even vaguely) what they
meant. (citing THE FEDERALIST NO. 37, supra)).
77
See supra notes 45 & 67; infra note 79; cf. Calabresi & Larsen, supra note 52, at 1061
(concluding that prior to 1787, the idea of providing for some measure of interdepartment[al]
incompatibility had become something of an American constitutional tradition. Interestingly,
it was a tradition that existed independently of the contemporaneous devotion to the
separation of powers. (emphasis added)).
Compare AMAR, supra note 9, at 304
([Convicting a President in impeachment proceedings] is not something that Senators should
do lightly, lest we slide toward a kind of parliamentary government that our entire structure of
government was designed to repudiate. (emphasis added)), Akhil Reed Amar, An(other)
Afterword on the Bill of Rights, 87 GEO. L.J. 2347, 2359 (1999) ([Convicting a President in
impeachment proceedings] is not something that senators should do lightly, lest we slide
towards a kind of parliamentary government that our entire structure of government was
designed to repudiate. (emphasis added)), Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 114 (asserting that
our Constitution[] [has] careful[ly] reject[ed] . . . a Parliamentary/Prime Minister Model of
presidential selection (emphasis added)), id. at 118 (The Framers self-consciously rejected
the governmental model embodied by eighteenth century Prime Minister Robert Walpole,
who served simultaneously as the leading Member of Parliament and the Chief Executive
Ministersimultaneously as Speaker and President in American constitutional parlance.
(emphasis added) (citing, absent any pin-point cite, Steven G. Calabresi & Joan L. Larsen,
One Person, One Office: Separation of Powers or Separation of Personnel?, 79 CORNELL L.
REV. 1045 (1994))), id. at 120 (using strangely anthropomorphic language in asserting that to
act simultaneously as President/Chief Executive Officer and Speaker of the House is to be
precisely the kind of Walpolian Prime Minister our Constitutions text, history, and structure
self-consciously reject (emphasis added) (citing, again, absent any pin-point cite, Calabresi &
Larsen, supra)), id. at 124 ([T]he Constitution[] fundamental[ly] reject[s] . . . a parliamentary
system in which the legislature, or its dominant party, elects its own leader as Prime
Minister/Chief Executive Officer. (emphasis added)), id. at 127 (In sum, whether we
consider the deep implications of the Constitutions separation of powers and its rejection of a
Parliamentary/Prime Minister model or focus on the more mundane, practical issues of time
and place, we reach the same conclusion . . . . (emphasis added)), id. at 120 n.48 (If [the
Speaker] must remain in this office in order to act as President, as the [purported] Madisonian
reading insists, then his service as [acting] President wholly depends on the will of a simple
House majority, in obvious violation of the Constitutions rejection of the Walpole Prime
Minister Model. (emphasis added)), Goldstein, supra note 42, at 1022 (asserting that
legislative officer succession resembles parliamentary government, which our Constitution
emphatically rejected (emphasis added)), Kesavan, supra note 49, at 1766 (Indeed, if we
look at the Constitution as a whole, we see that it is a clause-by-clause rejection of the
parliamentary system. (emphasis added) (citing, absent any pin-point cite, Calabresi &
334
[Vol. 61:285
Larsen, supra)), Laurence H. Tribe, Taking Text and Structure Seriously: Reflections on FreeForm Method in Constitutional Interpretation, 108 HARV. L. REV. 1221, 1238 (1995) (The
type of congressional power thereby created, in which the legislative branch directly
supervised the execution of the law, was akin to the parliamentary form of government that
the Framers repudiated. (emphasis added)), and Vikram David Amar, The TV Drama
Commander in Chief and the Constitution: Is the Federal Presidential Succession Statute
(Dec.
8,
2005),
Unconstitutional?
(Part
II),
FINDLAW
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/amar/20051208.html (When the Constitutions framers
reflected on the process of presidential selection, they consciously rejected a Parliamentarian
model in which the Chief Executive (a Prime Minister) is chosen by the legislature and its
dominant party. (emphasis added)), with AMAR, supra note 9, at 153 (noting, in a sentence
somewhat obscured by surrounding parentheses, that in 1787, [t]he modern Westminster
model, in which Parliament picks its own leader with minimal monarchical involvement, still
lay in the future (emphasis added)), MICHAEL STOKES PAULSEN ET AL., THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES: TEXT, STRUCTURE, HISTORY, AND PRECEDENT 285 (2010) (The
Incompatibility Clause was adopted as an eighteenth century ethics rule to prevent the
president from bribing members of Congress to support his policies by dangling federal
offices in front of them the way British monarchs were thought to have bribed members of
Parliament to build up a Court Party. . . . This ethics rule produced the American system of
separation of personnel, as well as separation of powers. But, that was all an unintended
consequence. (emphasis added) (citing Calabresi & Larsen, supra)), Steven G. Calabresi,
Political Parties as Mediating Institutions, 61 U. CHI. L. REV. 1479, 1496 (1994) (Without
realizing or intending to do so, the Framers wrote a Constitution that absolutely forecloses the
possibility of parliamentary English-style party government in this country. (emphasis
added)); Calabresi & Larsen, supra at 1095 (explaining that the debates on incompatibility
do not reveal a self-conscious attempt on the part of the Framers to set in motion a radical
departure from the British system of parliamentary government (emphasis added)), and Jack
N. Rakove, Statement on the Background and History of Impeachment, 67 GEO. WASH. L.
REV. 682, 688 (1999) ([I]n fact, a full-blown model of parliamentary government was not yet
available for the Framers to reject. (emphasis added)).
So powerful is the separation of powers cult that otherwise sober scholars stray into
hyperbole. Compare, e.g., Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause
Apply to the President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 143-44 (Likewise, colonial
governors, although advised by executive councils, did not sit as members of colonial
legislatures. The office of governor was distinct and separate from, for example, the office of
a member of the House of Burgesses.), id. at 145 (asserting that there is an eight-hundredyear-long Anglo-American practice of Kings and Presidents never ever sitting simultaneously
as members of Parliament or Congress (emphasis in the original)), and Steven G. Calabresi,
Closing Statement, A Term of Art or the Artful Reading of Terms?, in Tillman & Calabresi,
supra note 10, at 154 ([My interlocutors] position is that Presidents can serve
simultaneously as members of Congress even though in eight hundred years of English and
American history no King, Queen, colonial governor, or President has ever served
simultaneously in the legislature. (emphasis added)), with JOHN F. BURNS, CONTROVERSIES
BETWEEN ROYAL GOVERNORS AND THEIR ASSEMBLIES IN THE NORTHERN AMERICAN COLONIES
320 (1923) ([Prior to 1733, Governor] Cosby [of New York] took part in the deliberations of
the Council while acting in a legislative capacity. Thus as a member [!] of the Council he had
one vote, as executive he had final veto power, and in case of tie he cast the deciding ballot.
Always two, and sometimes three, votes were at his command. (emphasis added)), MARY
PATTERSON CLARKE, PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 232 (Leonard
W. Levy ed., Da Capo Press 1971) (1943) (explaining that in some colonies, the governor
frequently sat with the council, and there was some difference of opinion as to whether he was
or was not a member of it (emphasis added)), LEONARD WOODS LABAREE, ROYAL
GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA: A STUDY OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL SYSTEM BEFORE 1783, at 160
2013]
335
(N.Y., Frederick Ungar Pub. Co. 1958) (1930) (noting that royal governors not only often
attended the legislative council but presided there), id. (noting that less commonly royal
governors asserted the right to vote in the legislative council, either as a regular member, or
as the presiding officer in case of a tie), id. at 164-65 (noting that the law officers of the
Board of Trade opposed the claim of New Yorks Governor Cosby to a vote in the legislative
council, but their advice and recommendation was not put into force by the Privy Council),
and WILLIAM SMITH, A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SEVERAL STATES
WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH THAT OF THE UNITED STATES tbl.1 & n.n (Philadelphia, John
Thompson 1796) (Connecticut. [Governed under the] Old Colonial Charter of Charles II
[of 1662]. unaltered, except where necessary to adapt it to the Independence of the United
States. . . . Governor, as Presid[ent] of the council, and the Speaker of the House, have each a
vote, besides a casting vote. (emphasis omitted)). As I hope Professor Calabresi will come to
agree: there is no sound historical basis for Professor Calabresis eight hundred year[]
claim: a claim he made absent any citation to any authority of any kind. During the onehundred fifty year period prior to the American Revolution, royal and proprietary governors
frequently sat in the upper house of bicameral colonial parliaments, even when the upper
house acted in a legislative (as opposed to an executive) capacity. This was a contested
practice, but a practice it was. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 69 (Alexander Hamilton), supra
note 4, at 372 n.* ([I]t is always justifiable to reason from the practice of government till its
propriety has been constitutionally questioned.). But see PATRICIA U. BONOMI, A FACTIOUS
PEOPLE: POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN COLONIAL NEW YORK 134 (1971) (explaining that in 1736,
an order from the Board of Trade directed Governor Cosby to absent himself when the
Council was considering legislation); BURNS, supra at 320 (apparently referring to the same
order discussed by Bonomi, supra, and suggesting that it was issued in 1733).
Moreover, in the absence of colonial governors, the senior member of the upper house
frequently took on the role of acting governor, and similar practices prevailed in the States
after independence. See 2 ANNALS OF CONG. 1903 (Joseph Gales, Sr. ed., Washington, Gales
& Seaton 1834) (recording January 10, 1791 debate on a proposed bill on presidential
succession, including statement by Congressman Sherman, who said: In case of the death of
a Governor and Lieutenant Governor, it is common in the several States for the oldest
counselor to preside [Tillman addingover the administration].); EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE,
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA 56 & 233 n.26
(Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1898) (reproducing Queen Annes 1707 instruction
providing that thereafter the senior councillor should execute the [royal governors]
commission in the governors absence and further noting that this policy was universally
enforced [by] the reign of George III (emphasis added)); M. EUGENE SIRMANS, COLONIAL
SOUTH CAROLINA: A POLITICAL HISTORY 1663-1763, at 76 (1966) (noting that in 1700, in
South Carolina, then a proprietary colony, after Governor Blakes death, the council met . . .
to select one of themselves as governor); see also LABAREE, supra at 160-61 (noting that
councillor Van Dam presided over the legislative council while he was acting governor); cf.
FEERICK, FROM FAILING HANDS, supra note 9, at 38 (describing pre-1787 state constitutional
practice in Delaware and North Carolina providing for legislative officer succession in regard
to the governorship); id. at 37-38 (describing pre-1787 state constitutional practice in New
York running the line of succession to legislative officers after the lieutenant governor); id.
at 35 (noting that Benjamin Franklins Albany Plan of 1754 provided for legislative officer
succession in the case of the death of the President General); John D. Feerick, Response to
Akhil Reed Amars Address on Applications and Implications of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment,
47 HOUS. L. REV. 41, 62 (2010) (describing New York, Delaware, and North Carolina
practices, and noting that [t]he succession arrangements in the thirteen original colonies, as
well as provisions of the early state constitutions, indicate that legislative [officer] succession
was sometimes contemplated to fill a vacancy in the office of the governor. (emphasis
added)).
336
[Vol. 61:285
doctrine is understood in the United States today.79 But that begs the question of
whether our modern legal sensibilities (burdened by the weight of centuries of
For the reader interested in assessing the primary documents on the Cosby-Van Dam dispute,
which was the genesis of the celebrated John Peter Zenger trial, see 6 DOCUMENTS RELATIVE
TO THE COLONIAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 39-45 (E.B. OCallaghan ed., Albany,
Weed, Parsons and Co. 1855). Issues connected to colonial-era legislative officer succession
were at the heart of the Zenger trial. Zenger was if not the most famous, at least, one of the
most significant pre-1763 trials in the British New World colonies. Thus it seems likely that
lawyers and the educated lay public would have been aware of the common practice of
legislative officer succession. See also 2 HERBERT L. OSGOOD, THE AMERICAN COLONIES IN
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 158 (Mass., Peter Smith 1958) (1924) (describing contested efforts
by the senior member of the Massachusetts council, acting with the council, in 1715, to
assume the government six months after the death of Queen Anne); id. at 441-42 (explaining
that from July 1731 to August 1732, Lewis Morris, as eldest councillor administered the
New Jersey government between the death of Governor Montgomerie and the arrival of his
successor, Governor Cosby); id. at 443 (noting that Rip Van Dam, as president of the council
and its oldest member, head[ed] New Yorks government in 1731 after the death of
Governor Montgomerie, prior to the arrival of Governor Cosby); id. at 161 (noting that from
1706 to 1710, Edward Jennings, president of the council, administered the Virginia
government in the absence of an appointed governor). Jennings was Governor Edmund
Jennings Randolphs great-grandfather. Thus it is more than likely that this particular Framer
and Ratifier knew the relevant colonial history surrounding legislative officer succession, as it
was his familys history.
One must ask: what is the historical basis for the modern consensus?
78
See generally Richard Albert, The Cult of Constitutionalism, 39 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 373
(2012).
79
See Gerhard Casper, An Essay in Separation of Powers: Some Early Versions and
Practices, 30 WM. & MARY L. REV. 211, 224 (1989) (No consensus existed as to the precise
institutional arrangements that would satisfy the requirements of the doctrine [of separation of
powers].); Keith Werhan, Normalizing the Separation of Powers, 70 TUL. L. REV. 2681, 2684
(1996) (The constitutional text usually is indeterminate with respect to important separationof-powers disputes. Notwithstanding (or perhaps, because of) the multiple meanings of the
separation-of-powers extant during the founding era, the Framers made no attempt to adopt a
fixed, constitutional definition of the concept. (footnote omitted)); cf. Douglas W. Vick, The
Human Rights Act and the British Constitution, 37 TEX. INTL L.J. 329, 341 n.88 (2002)
(noting that there is no consensus among British legal scholars concerning the purpose served
by the separation of powers). See generally William B. Gwyn, The Separation of Powers
and Modern Forms of Democratic Government, in SEPARATION OF POWERSDOES IT STILL
WORK? 65, 76 (Robert A. Goldwin & Art Kaufman eds., 1986) (concluding [t]here is . . .
some separation of legislative and executive power in the parliamentary type of representative
government); id. at 78 (concluding that the view that [t]he separation of powers is not part
of [the British] constitution is an erroneous opinion); ADAM TOMKINS, PUBLIC LAW 47-54
(2003) (describing separation of powers in the British Constitution as grounded in the
supremacy of [a]cts of Parliament, independence of the Crown subject to ministerial
responsibility, and courts subject to certain parliamentary controls); M.J.C. VILE,
CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE SEPARATION OF POWERS 321-24 (1967); Richard Albert,
Presidential Values in Parliamentary Democracies, 8 INTL J. CONST. L. 207, 220 (2010)
(concluding that the separation of powers exists [in the United Kingdom] between Parliament
and the Crown and not among government branches, as is otherwise the case in the American
presidential model (emphasis added) (citing Tomkins, supra, approvingly)); Richard Albert,
The Fusion of Presidentialism and Parliamentarism, 57 AM. J. COMP. L. 531, 534 (2009)
(arguing that [t]he separation of powers between Crown and Parliament emerged as part of
2013]
337
Supreme Court and other federal court jurisprudence) are consistent with the worldviews of the Framers and Ratifiers of 17871789. It is a conceit to believe that we
think (today) as they did (then) on all points.
IV. THE DANGER OF CHAFETZS WRONG METAPHOR
The difference between Professor Chafetzs view and my own is no mere object
of historical curiosity. It has substantial practical implications with regard to
concrete problems that confront our legal system. For example, Professor Chafetz
states:
A proper appreciation for the virtues of American impeachment procedure
might also lead us to be suspicious of other legal rules that have the effect
of incentivizing assassination. The current presidential succession
regime, in which the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore
of the Senate are third and fourth in line to the presidency, 3 U.S.C. 19
(2006), does create such perverse incentives when the Speaker or
President pro tempore is from a different party than the President.
Cabinet officer succession, which would ensure party continuity, would
thus both eliminate constitutional problems with the succession
regime . . . .80
Professor Chafetzs positionalthough unfortunately widely sharedis plainly
incorrect. Strict cabinet succession fails to preserve party continuity in the event that
the Revolution Settlement, statutorily enshrined in the Act of Settlement of 1700 . . . .
(footnote omitted)); William B. Gwyn, The Indeterminacy of the Separation of Powers in the
Age of the Framers, 30 WM. & MARY L. REV. 263, 265 (1989) (As in the days of the
framers . . . lawyers and judges today continue to invoke the doctrine without indicating . . .
the range of institutional arrangements that might satisfy the doctrine.); William B. Gwyn,
The Indeterminacy of the Separation of Powers and the Federal Courts, 57 GEO. WASH. L.
REV. 474 (1989); Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., The Shot (Not) Heard Round The World:
Reconsidering the Perplexing U.S. Preoccupation with the Separation of Legislative and
Executive Powers, 51 B.C. L. REV. 1, 22 (2010) (The question that demands to be asked and
answered, obviously enough, is: why do other nations find the conflation of legislative and
executive policy making power [as in British-type cabinet government] to be entirely
unproblematic?).
80
Chafetz, supra note 1, at 421 n.567 (emphasis added) (citing Amar & Amar, supra
note 9, at 123, 126, 135 n.134); see also Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Is the Vice Presidency
Necessary?, THE ATLANTIC, May 1974 ([The Presidential Succession Act of 1886] . . . put
the line of descent through the Cabinet, thereby . . . preventing the mechanics of succession
from transferring the presidency from one party to the other without an election.). It is
cabinet officer succession, as proposed by the Amars and Chafetz, which incentivizes
wiping out the entire statutory line of succession. See 3 U.S.C. 19(d) (2006). Cabinet
officer succession might be some protection against the occasional assassin, but it risks
turning a catastrophic attack on the United States into a calamity from which recovery by
regular, legal, constitutional, and timely means may be an impossibility. In other words,
cabinet succession provides for party continuity (in some circumstances) at the risk of
introducing short term chaos and long term political disunion. It bears noting that our current
legal framework providing for legislative officer succession was the brainchild of President
Truman, the only President to order a nuclear attack on an enemy nation. Is the risk we face
today not John Wilkes Booth, but a dirty nuclear bomb the size of a suitcase? Incentivizing?
Are not Chafetz and the Amars fighting the last war?
338
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the incoming President and Vice President are killed (or otherwise unable to qualify
for any reason) any time between the date of the general popular election until the
new Presidents first cabinet officer is confirmed. That is more than several months.
In such a situation, the acting presidency will fall to the first cabinet officer in the
line of succession from the outgoing administration.81 Such an officer may be part
of an administration that has been thoroughly rejected at the polls (in primaries or in
the general election) and/or of a party different from the President-elect.
81
See, e.g., Act of Jan. 19, 1886, ch. 4, 1, 24 Stat. 1 (repealed by Presidential Succession
Act, 3 U.S.C. 19 (1947)). There is no complexity here. In a regime of strict cabinet
succession, if the new administration has not yet installed any officers in the line of
succession, then in the event of a double vacancy, the acting presidency falls to lame duck
officers from the out-going administration (if we are lucky) or to no one at all. Cf. John C.
Fortier & Norman J. Ornstein, Presidential Succession and Congressional Leaders, 53 CATH.
U. L. REV. 993, 1006 (2004) (Finally, one should consider the case of a terrorist attack that
kills the President-elect and Vice President-elect shortly before they take office. In all of
these cases, Cabinet succession is impossible, because the new Cabinet (that of the Presidentelect) is officially nominated and confirmed only after the new President takes office.
(emphasis added)); Joel K. Goldstein, Akhil Reed Amar and Presidential Continuity, 47 HOUS.
L. REV. 67, 90 (2010) (If there is no President-elect or Vice President-elect, there is no
incoming Cabinet. The only Cabinet is the outgoing one, which may be associated with an
administration just rejected at the polls. It would make no sense to designate an outgoing
Cabinet officer as acting President.); Goldstein, supra note 42, at 1024 (same). But cf. Akhil
Reed Amar, Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Death: Closing the Constitutions Succession
Gap, 48 ARK. L. REV. 215, 225 (1994) (noting that if after the inauguration, both the President
and Vice President die together, then congressional legislationthe Presidential Succession
Actkicks in and provides the rules of succession, pursuant to the explicit invitation of
Article II); id. at 226 (same, but discussing the period between Congresss counting the
electoral votes and the inauguration); id. at 228 (same, but discussing the period between the
meeting of the electors and prior to Congresss counting the electoral votes, and, further,
making the analysis subject to proposed statutory reforms); id. at 233 (same, but discussing
the period after the popular election but prior to the electors meeting). Professor Amar is
correct, but only under a regime permitting legislative officer succession (as does the current
succession statute) or something akin to it. Professor Amar fails to clearly flag to the reader
the inherent structural defects associated with Cabinet successiona reform which he has
supported throughout his many publications. See, e.g., Akhil Reed Amar, Applications and
Implications of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, 47 HOUS. L. REV. 1, 23 (2010) (This rule of
Cabinet succession (which was in place for sixty years before Congress changed the law in
1947) helps maximize the policy continuity between the President that Americans voted for on
Election Day and the statutory successor who ends up taking his place. (emphasis added));
id. at 29 (If Americans elect a President of one party, why should we get stuck with a
President of the opposite party [under our current system of legislative officer succession]
perhaps (as in the fictional The West Wing) a sworn foe of the person we chose? Cabinet
succession would avoid this oddity. (emphasis added)). But see Presidential Succession Act:
Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 108th
Cong. 52 (2004) (statement of Akhil Amar: And I do think in very, very highly unusual
situations where you really try to have Cabinet succession, officer succession, and everyones
gone, I think only a real constitutional zealot, maybe without good judgment, would say you
cant have congressional leaders in that circumstance because the Constitution really isnt a
suicide pact, and so I think I appreciate sort of the prudence involved there.). Has Professor
Amar said anything like this in any of his journal articles or books, including even those
published after his 2004 testimony?
2013]
339
But wait, it gets worse. Much worse. If the President and Vice President are
killed any time between inauguration day and prior to the confirmation of the new
administrations first cabinet officer, then there are no officers in the line of
succession because the officers in the line of succession from the prior
administration will either have resigned or have been removed (by the outgoing
President) prior to inauguration day.82 In these circumstances, the continuity of the
Executive Branch of the government of the United States would be at an end. Strict
cabinet succession risks the end of legitimate constitutional government.83
The chief purpose of legislative officer succession is to enlist the surviving
institutions of governmentthe House and the Senatein recreating those
82
See L. ELAINE HALCHIN, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., RL34722, PRESIDENTIAL

TRANSITIONS: ISSUES INVOLVING OUTGOING AND INCOMING ADMINISTRATIONS 27 (2008) (By
tradition, appointees to these positions usually step down when the appointing President
leaves office, unless asked to stay by the President-elect.); cf. JOHN P. BURKE, PRESIDENTIAL
TRANSITIONS: FROM POLITICS TO PRACTICE 395 (2000) ([E]very new President encounters a
corporate headquarters in which the top positions are vacant and most offices empty.). See
generally Anne Joseph OConnell, Vacant Offices: Delays in Staffing Top Agency Positions,
82 S. CAL. L. REV. 913 (2009). As a matter of law, cabinet members of a prior administration
do not retain their offices until their successors take office. Each officers hold on his office is
at the discretion of the out-going President (if there is one) until the new administration
begins, and, thereafter, at the discretion of the new President (if there is one). See HALCHIN,
supra at 27. The modern tradition is that such officers resign prior to the start of a new
administration. A President might leave an officer in office when requested by the incoming
administration, particularly where the two Presidents (i.e., the incumbent and the Presidentelect) are of the same party. If an officer refuses to resign, a President may threaten to remove
the officer in order to elicit the expected response. The continuity problem is not solved by
leaving a few holdover cabinet members in office during the transition. Should the holdovers
die (or be impeached, or otherwise become disabled), there is no way to appoint other officers
into the line of succession absent a President or acting President. The problem inheres in
cabinet succession itself: would-be successors must be appointed by a President, who ex
hypothesi no longer exists.
83
See supra note 81 (collecting authority); 2 ANNALS OF CONG., supra note 77, at 1914
(recording January 13, 1791 debate on a proposed bill on presidential succession, including
statement by Congressman Giles, who stated: [I]t was the duty of the House to make
provision for the accident [of a double vacancy] before it occurred. If it was left till the case
actually took place, it would then be too late to think of remedying the evil; for it was to be
provided by a Legislative act . . . and could therefore not be obtained when the chair was
vacant. Then, if the event should happen before it was provided for, there would be, he
conceived, an end to this Government. (emphasis added)); Silva, supra note 9, at 452 (If
calamity had befallen [President] Arthur [after the death of President Garfield, who Arthur
succeeded] or [President] Cleveland [after the death of Vice President Hendricks] before the
organization of Congress, there would have been no successor and no constitutional means of
selecting one [at least until the House and/or Senate assembled, organized, and chose a
presiding officer].); cf. WILLIAM RAWLE, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA 48 (Philadelphia, H.C. Carey & I. Lea 1825) ([O]ne difficulty not
provided for, may possibly some day occur. If more than three [candidates] of those highest
in [electoral] votes for president, or [more] than two of those voted for as vice president
should be equal in number of [electoral] votes, it is not directed [by Article II or the Twelfth
Amendment] how the selection [of President and/or Vice President] shall be made.).
340
[Vol. 61:285
institutions which have failed (e.g., the presidency).84 And even if the House and
Senate chambers were destroyed and all the members killed in a natural catastrophe
or act of war, the membership could be replaced in relatively short order under wellestablished procedures.85 This is not so for the cabinet line of succession: once it and
the President and Vice President are gone, it is beyond our ability to effect timely
and legally valid repair (at least until the next regularly scheduled presidential
election).86
Burke, as usual, put it best:
The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the
two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England
found itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the
bond of union in their ancient edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the
84
The problems associated with strict cabinet succession cannot be reliably ameliorated
by ad hoc presidential elections, which, assuming that they are carried off without a hitch,
might fill out the remainder of the presidential term. During the interregnum, the nation is
still left rudderless.
Nor can the problems associated with strict cabinet succession be resolved through the
intermediary of ad hoc presidential designees added to the line of succession. First, the
President can only make those appointments after he takes office, not before. Second, even if
the President-elect were granted such a power (via constitutional amendment or statute), this
leaves a gap between final action by the electors (or by the House should the election fall to
the House) and action by the President-elect (or President should the decision fall to the House
and the House delays making a decision until past January 20when the new administration
should have come into office). To put it another way, any system of succession based on
fixed lists (e.g., cabinet succession) can failassuming a big enough war or series of
accidents or both. If everyone on the list of successors is dead (or fails to qualify), legitimate
constitutional government in the Executive Branch is at an end. Likewise presentment of bills
must entirely cease. The benefit of legislative officer succession is that at some point the
House or Senate can reconstitute itself (if needs be) and one of those bodies can anoint a
successor acting-President. The choice of the (reconstituted) House or Senate may not be of
the same party as the President-elect, but our legal institutions will go on in a recognizably
constitutionally valid way.
85
See, e.g., Sanford Levinson, Comment, Assuring Continuity of Government, 4 PIERCE L.

REV. 201, 201-02 (2006), 4 U.N.H. L. REV. 201, 201-02 (2006) (explaining that, under the
Seventeenth Amendment, Senate vacancies, from catastrophic disaster or otherwise, can be
filled by state governors, and concluding that the Senate could be back up to its full
strength . . . within a very few days). A state governor may only fill Senate vacancies if
authorized to do so by his state legislature. See U.S. CONST. amend. XVII, 2.
Unfortunately, several state legislatures have not granted their governor statutory authority to
fill Senate vacancies. See Zachary D. Clopton & Steven E. Art, The Meaning of the
Seventeenth Amendment and a Century of State Defiance, 107 NW. U. L. REV. (forthcoming
July 2013) (manuscript at 55 n.173) (on file with author), available at
http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=1915673 (Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin have
clear laws prohibiting appointments, and Alaska . . . appears to have repealed its law
governing appointments, though the issue is not yet resolved.). In the House, the prevailing
view is that vacancies may only be filled via election. See Levinson, supra at 203 & n.13
(citing Article I, Section 2, Clause 4, i.e., the Writs of Election Clause). However, such House
elections could be held on an expedited basis; they need not wait for the regularly scheduled
biennial election.
86
See supra note 84.
2013]
341
whole fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the

deficient part of the old constitution through the parts which were not
impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part
recovered might be suited to them. They acted by the ancient organized
[assemblies] in the shape of their old organization . . . .87
Thus, interpreting the word Officer (standing alone) as used in the Succession
Clause88 (as opposed to Officers . . . under the United States as used elsewhere in the
Constitution) to include the Speaker and President pro tem facilitates orderly
succession, with some (albeit less than perfect) democratic credentials.
V. A TURN OF THE TIDE
As a textual matter, each of these five formulations seemingly describes
the same stations (apart from the civil/military distinction)the
modifying terms of, under, and under the Authority of are essentially
synonymous.
Akhil R. Amar and Vikram D. Amar, Presidential Succession (1995)89
[Professor Dionisopoulos] reading, however, is sloppy . . . [As] the
disqualification of any person holding any Office under the United
States makes clear, the Constitution uses the phrase Office . . . under
the United Statesand its textual cousins, Officers of the United
States, civil Officers of the United States, and Office of Trust or
Profit under the United States,as a term of art to refer to executive and
judicial positions only.
Josh Chafetz, Democracys Privileged Few (2007)90
87
BURKE, supra note 69, at 29-30 (emphasis added).
88
U.S. CONST. art. II, 1, cl. 6 (In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or
of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office,
the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the
Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President,
declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until
the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. (emphasis added)).
89
See Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 114-15; see also PRESERVING OUR INSTITUTIONS:
THE CONTINUITY OF THE PRESIDENCY 39 (Second Report of the Continuity of Government
Commn June 2009) (The Constitution allows Congress to specify which Officers shall be
in the line of succession, a term that almost certainly refers to executive branch officials.
(emphasis added) (footnote omitted)). But see Schatz, supra note 13, at 157-58 (The obvious
distinction between Office and Office of Profit or Trust implies strongly that the framers
did not intend to bring all U.S. Government employment within the [Emolument] [C]lauses
coverage. (emphasis added)).
90
CHAFETZ, supra note 13, at 280 n.68 (second set of ellipses in the original) (emphasis
added) (emphasis in the original omitted) (citations omitted) (citing Dionisopoulos, supra
note 23, at 108 n.16, 111); see also id. at 171 (rejecting Dionisopoulos position as
unpersuasive). Compare Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 134 (Several members of
Congress argued against the constitutionality of the 1947 [succession] law during the
legislative debates, but the bills supporters relied on an opinion by Acting Attorney General
Douglas McGregor, who concluded that congressmen were Officers within the meaning of
the Succession Clause. McGregors reasoning isnot to mince wordsshoddy. (emphasis
342
[Vol. 61:285
added) (footnote omitted)), and id. at 134 n.131 (Correct interpretation [of the Constitution]
requires careful examination of the Constitution itself, and this McGregor failed to offer.),
with id. at 114-15 (affirming that officers of the United States and officers under the United
States and officers under the Authority of the United States are essentially synonymous).
For some reason, issues touching on succession and impeachment seem to elicit unusually
strong language. See, e.g., AMAR, supra note 9, at 568 n.53 (Bergers argument [with regard
to the impeachability of Senators] made a hash of constitutional text, structure, and
precedent. (emphasis added)); id. at 545 n.45 (denominating Bergers view as only
somewhat cranky (emphasis added)); Vikram Amar, supra note 42, at 406 n.7 ([L]et me set
the record straight on a non-truth [!] Ms. Coulter asserts about the impeachability of
Congresspersons. Notwithstanding her suggestions . . . House members and Senators are not
officers within the meaning of the impeachment clauses of the Constitution and are thus not
impeachable. (citing, somewhat unhelpfully, Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 115-16));
Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the President?, in
Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 141 (affirming that a position with which he disagrees
is utterly implausible (emphasis added)); Robert H. Bork, Read the Constitution: Its
Removal or Nothing, WALL ST. J., Feb. 1, 1999, at 21A (describing views on impeachment
with which he disagrees as grotesque and preposterous, and further describing Professor
Isenberghs position as fanciful). Like Chafetz, I too look to English literature for
understanding. Cf. 7 J.K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS 497 (2007)
(Whether it needs to pass by murder, I do not know. Its history is bloody, but that may be
simply due to the fact that it is such a desirable object, and arouses such passions . . . .
(emphasis added) (emphasis in the original omitted)); 2 J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE LORD OF THE
RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS 669 (50th ann. ed. 2004) (1954) ([I]t is a mighty heirloom of some
sort, and such things do not breed peace among confederates, not if aught may be learned
from ancient tales.).
For example, recently, Professor Saikrishna Prakash objected to my asserting that historically
Presidents and Vice Presidents are not issued commissions under the Commissions Clause.
Prakash wrote: That no physical evidence [Tillman addingas opposed to?] of such a
commission [granted to a President or Vice President] exists, however, certainly does not
prove that the President never issued one. Prakash, supra note 45, at 148 (emphasis added).
Does not the burden of proof lie with Professor Prakash to show that such artifacts exist, as
opposed to my showing that they do not? Cf. Gary Lawson, Optimal Specificity in the Law of
Separation of Powers: The Numerous Clauses Principle, 124 HARV. L. REV. F. 42, 47 (2011)
(It is a basic principle of epistemology that he who asserts the existence of something bears
the burden of proof. (emphasis added)); id. at 47 n.20 (There is good warrant for this
principle. The existence of any entity has consequences, and one can look for those
consequences as evidence of the entitys existence. Nonexistence, however, does not always
have consequences, so the absence of evidence is prima facie proof of nonexistence.). Is
Professor Prakashs attempt to shift the burden of proof reasonable?
Hermione Granger: Well, how can that be real?
Xenophilius Lovegood: Prove that it is not . . . .
Granger: [She] looked outraged. But thatsIm sorry, but thats completely
ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesnt exist? . . . I mean, you could claim
that anythings real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobodys proved it
doesnt exist!
Lovegood: Yes, you could . . . . I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a
little.
7 ROWLING, supra at 411-12 (emphasis in the original). But see supra note 52 (collecting
authority tending to establish, but not proving, that such commissions do not and have never
existed). Albeit, historically, strong language is no stranger to law journals. See, e.g., Edward
W. Bailey, Dean Pound and Administrative LawAnother View, 42 COLUM. L. REV. 781, 802
2013]
343
In England, office of profit from the Crown was understood to be

narrower than office of profit under the Crown . . . .
John Waugh, Disqualification of Members (2005)91
Essentially, the distinction between Chafetzs (and the Amars) views and my
own position comes down to this. Those in the academic consensus believe the
Constitution embodies a hard textual distinction between officers and members
of Congress. I agree with that position. But with this caveat. The distinction put
forward by those in the consensus is merely an exemplar of the higher order
structural division embodied in the constitutional text between: on the one hand,
constitutionally mandated officials (i.e., elected positions, members of Congress,
Speaker of the House, Senate President pro tem, Vice President, and Presidenti.e.,
those individually or collectively presiding over departments or branches of the
government of the United States, persons also colloquially known as magistrates or
(1942) (The extent of [Professor Kenneth Culp Daviss] accomplishment in that

enterprise . . . is to demonstrate his own agility in avoiding contact with unpleasant facts.
(emphasis added)); Raoul Berger, Administrative ArbitrarinessA Reply to Professor Davis,
114 U. PA. L. REV. 783, 808 (1996) (Professor Davis assumes that bare restatement of his
position suffices to still criticism, and he stubbornly avoids the uncomfortable issues. But
assertion ex cathedra cannot take the place of reasoned refutation, even when it comes from
Professor Davis. (footnote omitted) (citing Bailey, supra)).
91
John Waugh, Disqualification of Members of Parliament in Victoria, 31 MONASH U. L.

REV. 288, 297 (2005) (In England, office of profit from the Crown was understood to be
narrower than office of profit under the Crown; appointment to an office from the Crown
was made personally by the monarch [Tillman addingor by the monarchs constitutional
representative acting under delegated authority, the latter method having particular salience
in the colonies]. (emphasis in the original)); see also CASES OF CONTROVERTED ELECTIONS,
DETERMINED IN COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, supra note 65, at 591-92
(reproducing committee debate from disputed Galway election of 1838, where Mr. Austin
(counsel for the sitting member who prevailed) distinguished offices from the Crown from
offices under the Crown and cited statutes from the reign of Queen Anne, William IV, and
George III (emphasis added)); cf. Orders of the Day: Report from Select Committee on the
Clare County Writ considered (House of Commons Debate Apr. 25, 1879), available at
http://yourdemocracy.newstatesman.com/parliament/orders-of-the-day/HAN814899.
Compare ANNE TWOMEY, THE CONSTITUTION OF NEW SOUTH WALES 437 (2004) (suggesting
that officers under the Crown encompasses, inter alia, positions subject to some degree of
supervisory power by the Crown over the office), id. at 438 (suggesting that an officer under
the Crown is one appointed by or removable by a representative of the Crown, and
accountable to the Crown and subject to the supervision of an officer appointed by the
Crown), id. ([O]ne would assume that [an elective office] is not . . . held under the
Crown.), and THE FEDERALIST NO. 72 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 386 (arguing
that [t]he persons, therefore, to whose immediate management these different
[administrative] matters are committed . . . ought to be subject to [the Presidents]
superintendence), with THE FEDERALIST NO. 70 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 379
([E]very magistrate [Tillman addingas opposed to officer] ought to be personally
responsible for his behaviour in office . . . . (emphasis added)), and THE FEDERALIST NO. 70
(Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 376 (If it be a public trust or office in which they are
clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and
even animosity. (emphasis added)).
344
[Vol. 61:285
holders of a public trust92), and, on the other hand, appointed or statutory offices
(i.e., offices created or regularized by Congress, or offices which Congress could
terminate,93 including both officers of the United States and legislative officers
chosen by either house of Congress, such as the Secretary of the Senate and the
Clerk of the House, collectively the Officers . . . under the United States).94 I would
92
See BRYAN A. GARNER, A DICTIONARY OF MODERN LEGAL USAGE 540 (2d ed. 2001)
(defining magistrate and noting the word . . . once referred to the official first in rank in a
branch of government (citing Justice Cardozo) (emphasis added)); supra note 48 (discussing
magistrates and departments) and infra note 94 (discussing magistrates and holders of public
trusts) and accompanying text; see also THE FEDERALIST NO. 70 (Alexander Hamilton), supra
note 4, at 379 ([E]very magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behaviour in
office . . . . (emphasis added)); AMAR, supra note 9, at 558 n.10 (Note the use of the juristic
word Magistracy to describe the executive, a common mode of expression and thought in
1787.); id. at 572 n.21 (noting that the eighteenth-century world [was] sensitive to fine
gradations of formal title); cf., e.g., TENCH COXE (nom de plume AN AMERICAN CITIZEN), AN
EXAMINATION OF THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NO. 2 (1788),
reprinted in PAMPHLETS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, PUBLISHED DURING ITS
DISCUSSION BY THE PEOPLE, 1787-1788, at 140, 146 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., Brooklyn, no
publisher 1888) (The office of the President, a Senator, and a Representative, and every other
place of power or profit, are therefore open to the whole body of the people.). Notice how
Coxe gives priority to the elected officials.
93
The intuition here is that although a first-in-time federal statute may terminate a nonmember legislative office, a next-in-time single-house order, rule, resolution, or vote can
recreate the office and appoint a person to that office. Notwithstanding the subsequent
appointment, the statute still may implement the rule of recognition by which third-parties
(e.g., the other House, the other branches, state governments, and private persons) will
recognize such a legislative office and the scope of the appointees powers. Thus, if a federal
statute has the potential to reduce a non-member legislative office to a nullity vis--vis the
world beyond that officers house, its members, employees, and property, then the office is an
office under the United States. Compare Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. 204, 225-32 (1821)
(recognizing, based on practical and historical considerations, despite the lack of any express
constitutional grant of authority, that the House of Representatives possesses an inherent
power (while the House remains in session) to imprison a third-party or citizen for contempt),
with THOMAS JEFFERSON, A MANUAL OF PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE FOR THE USE OF THE
SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 3.5Privilege, at 8 (Government Printing Office 1993)
(Washington City, Samuel Harrison Smith 1801) (suggesting that a federal statute could
regularize each house of Congresss purported inherent contempt power). On the other hand,
if the Constitution vests powers in an office, and those powers are not defeasible by federal
statute, then the office is a public trust under the United States. Looked at this way, one could
argue that both federal electors and the Chief Justice of the United States hold public trusts
under the United States.
94
If as Chafetz and the Amars argue officers of the United States is coextensive with
officers . . . under the United States, then the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the
House (and other non-member non-presiding congressional officers chosen by either house of
Congress) are eligible to be chosen presidential electors. See U.S. CONST. art. II, 1, cl. 2
(Elector Incompatibility Clause: [N]o Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office
of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. (emphasis added)).
This would render the selection of the president both dependent on Congress, and on officers
who lack independence. See AMAR, supra note 9, at 143 (If . . . a president were allowed to
stand for reelection, he needed to be allowed to make his case to a body of electors
independent of Congress. (emphasis added)); Kesavan, supra note 48, at 130 (The purpose
of the Elector Incompatibility Clause is to ensure the independence of Electors from the
2013]
345
Federal Government. (emphasis added)). Compare JAMES BAYARD, A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 92 (Philadelphia, Hogan & Thompson 1833)
(noting that the purpose of the Elector Incompatibility Clause is [t]o prevent any improper
influence from being exerted, by the [President] in office), with 1 JAMES KENT,
COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW 276 (N.Y., O. Halsted 2d ed. 1832) (noting that the
purpose of the Elector Incompatibility Clause is to prevent the [President] in office, at the
time of the election, from having any improper influence on his re-election, by his ordinary
agency in the government (emphasis added)). The focus of the exclusion relates to the
Presidents ability to sway (other) electors through his control over other their positions in the
government. Once those dependent or affiliated with the President are excluded (i.e., officers
of the United States), also excluding the President serves no purpose traditionally associated
with the clause. See also JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES 745, at 532 (Boston, Hilliard, Gray, and Co. abridged ed. 1833) (noting that
the purpose of the Elector Incompatibility Clause is to exclude those who might be suspected
of too great a devotion to the presidentagain the exclusion would not seem to incorporate
the President). An interpretation of the Constitutionsuch as Chafetzs and the Amars
permitting presidential election to be dependent on congressional officers strikes me as
particularly troubling. See Vikram Amar, supra note 77 ([T]he framers wanted the President
ordinarily to have a power base independent of Congress, so he could stand up to the
legislature; that is why Congresspersons cannot serve as presidential electors in the so-called
electoral college. (emphasis added)); see also NOTES OF ROBERT YATES, reprinted in 1
FARRANDS RECORDS, supra note 64, at 380 (recording George Masons June 22, 1787
contribution to debate on the then-evolving predecessor to Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2: It
seems as if it was taken for granted, that all offices will be filled by the executive, while I
think many will remain in the gift of the legislature. In either case, it is necessary to shut the
door against corruption. (emphasis added)); cf. JOHN A. SCHUTZ, LEGISLATORS OF THE
MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL COURT, 1691-1780: A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY 65 (1997)
(Roland Cotton was a clerk for many yearssometimes as a member . . . . From 1766,
Samuel Adams was both a member and clerk of the House . . . .); WILLIAM TUDOR, LIFE OF
JAMES OTIS 271 (1823) ([Otis] grew conspicuous after his admission to the [Massachusetts
lower house], of which he was chosen clerk; it being the practice to take that officer from
among the members.).
THE
Whether or not the Chief Justice of the United States should be characterized as a holder of a
public trust under the United States or as an officer under the United States is a peculiar and
complex question, full development of which will have to wait a wholly separate article. My
tentative view is that the office of Chief Justice of the United States, the constitutional office,
sits atop or presides over the Judicial Branch, and, is, therefore, a holder of a public trust
under the United States. See U.S. CONST. art. 1, 3, cl. 6 (The Senate shall have the sole
Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or
Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice [Tillman
addingnot Chief Judge] shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the
Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. (emphasis added)). By contrast, the
office of Chief Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States is a statutory office, and, is,
hence, an officer under the United States and an officer of the United States. See U.S. CONST.
art. 2, 2, cl. 2 ([The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of
the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges [Tillman
addingnot Justices] of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose
Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by
Law . . . . (emphasis added)); Todd E. Pettys, Choosing a Chief Justice: Presidential
Prerogative or a Job for the Court, 22 J.L. & POL. 231, 233 (2006) (noting that [t]he
Constitution says nothing about how the Chief Justice is to be chosenwhich might imply
that the Chief Justice is not an officer of the United States); Edward T. Swaine, Hail, No:
Changing the Chief, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 1709 passim (2006) (same). The confusion between
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[Vol. 61:285
further argue that it is precisely because Officers . . . under the United States
language does not reach the President and Vice President and members of Congress
that it was necessary to add language within the Religious Test Clause speaking to
public Trust[s] under the United Statesthe latter public trust language
accommodated the presidency, vice presidency, and members of Congress (and,
perhaps, federal electors).95
Chief Justice (of the United States) and Chief Judge (of the Supreme Court of the United
States) arises, in part, because the same person has always held both offices. See also Mary E.
Crock, Note, Abebe v. Commonwealth Minister for Immigration & Multicultural Affairs v.
Eshetu, 24 MELBOURNE U. L. REV. 190, 195 (2000) (The phrase officer of the
Commonwealth has been read broadly to include everyone from Ministers of the Crown (and
their delegates) to judges of lower federal courts.); cf. Luke Beck, The Constitutional
Prohibition on Religious Tests, 35 MELBOURNE U. L. REV. 323, 347 & n.172 (2011) (peer
reviewed) (explaining, with respect to a provision of the Australian Constitution granting
judicial review jurisdiction to the High Court with respect to decisions made by officers of
the Commonwealth, that High Court judges are not officers of the Commonwealth and
therefore the jurisdiction does not extend to decisions made by members of the High Court in
their individual or collective capacity (citing Federated Engine Drivers & Firemens Assn of
Australasia v Colonial Sugar Ref. Co. (1916) 22 CLR 103, 109 (Austl.) (Griffith, C.J.); id.
at 117 (Isaacs, Gavan Duffy, and Rich, JJ.))). It is worth noting that Beck also affirms that it
could hardly be doubted that . . . [each member of the High Court] hold[s] an office under the
Commonwealth. Beck, supra at 24. See generally Luke Beck, Note, Williams v
Commonwealth, School Chaplains and the Religious Tests Clause of the Constitution, 38
MONASH U. L. REV. 271, 290 & n.130 (2012); Plaintiffs Submissions in Reply to the
Submissions of the Interveners, Williams v Commonwealth, No. S307 of 2010 (Austl. July
28, 2011), available http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/cases/s307-2010/Williams_Plf_Repyint.pdf (collecting sources discussing officers of and under the Commonwealth).
95
See U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 3 ([N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a
Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (emphasis added)); THE
FEDERALIST NO. 70 (Alexander Hamilton), supra note 4, at 376 (If it be a public trust or
office in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of
personal emulation and even animosity. (emphasis added)); see also Letter from George
Washington to Elonor Franois lie, Comte de Moustier (May 25, 1789), in 30 THE
WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 333, 334 (John C. Fitzpatrick ed., 1939) (The
impossibility that one man should be able to perform all the great business of State, I take to
have been the reason for instituting the great Departments, and appointing officers therein, to
assist the supreme Magistrate in discharging the duties of his trust. (emphasis added)). The
Washingtonlie letter is widely cited in legal materials. See, e.g., Free Enter. Fund v. Pub.
Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3146 (2010) (Roberts, C.J.) (quoting from the
same passage of the Washington-to-lie letter); AMAR, supra note 9, at 193 (same); Akhil
Reed Amar, Some Opinions on the Opinions Clause, 82 VA. L. REV. 647, 658-59 (1996)
(same); Calabresi & Prakash, supra note 48, at 637 (same); Steven G. Calabresi & Christopher
S. Yoo, The Unitary Executive During the First Half-Century, 47 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 1451,
1475-76 (1997) (same); cf. 9 STATE OF NEW YORK: MESSAGES FROM THE GOVERNORS, 18921898, at 515 (Charles Z. Lincoln ed., Albany, J.B. Lyon Co. 1909) (reproducing May 23, 1894
veto message of Governor Roswell P. Flower, which stated: That one who holds the power to
appoint a public officer, to remove him at will and appoint his successor, to fix his salary and
to change it from time to time, holds a public trust will not be disputed . . . .placing the
officers below the holders of public trusts (emphasis added)); Kesavan, supra note 48, at 133
(noting that the public trust language of the Religious Test Clause is unique to that clause, and
opining that the Constitutions public trust language in that clause was intended to
accommodate federal electors, as well as members of Congress). On one occasion James
Madison intimated that officer and officer of the United States extended only to statutory
2013]
347
officers. See, e.g., 2 FARRANDS RECORDS, supra note 64, at 344-45 (recording Madisons
Philadelphia Convention entry for August 20, 1787: And to make all laws necessary and
proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested, by this
Constitution, in the Government of the U.S. or any department or officer thereof. Mr.
Madison and Mr. Pinkney [sic] moved to insert between laws and necessary and establish
all offices. [I]t appearing to them liable to cavil that the latter was not included in the former.
Mr. Govr. Morris[,] Mr. Wilson, Mr[.] Rutlidge [sic] and Mr. Elseworth [sic] urged that the
amendment could not be necessary. On the motion for inserting and establish all
offices . . . . [Ayes -- 2; noes 9.] (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)).
For what appears to be a period document distinguishing officials at the apex of (state or
federal) government authority (i.e., magistrates) from mere officers see Sabbath Prayer for the
Government, The Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (founded 1740):
May he who granteth deliverance unto nations and understanding unto their leaders,
whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, who delivered His servant David from the
destructive sword, who maketh a way in the sea and a path in its mighty waters, bless,
preserve, guard and assist the President and Vice-President of the United States, the
Senate and House of Representatives [in Congress assembled],* the Governor of this
Commonwealth, the members of the Legislature, the Mayor and other constituted
authorities in this City.
May the Supreme King of kings in His infinite mercy preserve them, grant them life,
and deliver them from all manner of trouble and danger. May the Supreme King of
kings in His infinite mercy inspire them and all their counselors and officers with
good towards us and all Israel, our brethren.
*This phrase is recited only when Congress is actually in session. See Letter Insert from Rev.
Albert E. Gabbai of Mikveh Israel to Seth Barrett Tillman (circa Nov. 25, 2008) (emphasis
added), available at http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (click, in Related
Files, letter_insert_mikveh_israel.pdf).
For a period British example, distinguishing those at the apex of political authority from mere
subordinate officers, compare 3 MATTHEW BACON, A NEW ABRIDGMENT OF THE LAW, Offices
and Officers 718, 719 (London, J. Worrall et al. 3d ed. 1768) (The King is the universal
Officer and Disposer of Justice within this Realm, from whom all others are said to be
derived . . . . (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)), with 4 JOHN COMYNS, A DIGEST OF THE
LAWS OF ENGLAND, Officer 239 (London, H. Woodfall & W. Strahan 1766) (The King is the
Fountain of all Power and Authority, and by his prerogative has the Nomination of all
Officers originally. (emphasis added)), and 2 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, BLACKSTONES
COMMENTARIES 271 (St. George Tucker ed., Philadelphia, W.Y. Birch & A. Small 1803)
(circa 1765) (The king is likewise the fountain of honour, of office, and of privilege: and this
in a different sense from that wherein he is stiled the fountain of justice; for here he is really
the parent of them.); see also GARNER, supra note 92, at 540 (defining magistrate and
noting the word . . . once referred to the official first in rank in a branch of government
(citing Justice Cardozo) (emphasis added)); cf. The Useless Electors, N.Y. TIMES, June 19,
1905, available at http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_ tillman/164/ (click, in Related Files,
USELESS_ELECTORS_NYT.pdf) (In every [p]residential campaign it happens, as it
happened in this State last Fall, that Directors or officers of [n]ational banks are placed upon
the list of Electors. It is of course absurd to suppose that a bank Director holds an office of
profit or trust under the Government, but it is the uniform practice of party committees to
avoid all doubt and danger by substituting other names as soon as the supposed
disqualification is discovered. (emphasis added)). The same ambiguity of language appears
in modern American legal literature. Compare Calabresi, Reply to Professor Ackerman, supra
note 67, at 480 (noting that the Constitution of 1787 created a unitary executive, provided for
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[Vol. 61:285
Here, I should like to pose a question to the reader and to those in the academic
consensus. The Religious Test Clause provides: [N]o religious Test shall ever be
required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.96
There is very little scholarship discussing the Religious Test Clause, much less the
meaning or scope of public trust under the United States.97 Given that nearly
no executive council, and gave the president the power to nominate all officers of the United
States and the power to make recess appointments (emphasis added)), with Calabresi,
Response, Political Question, supra note 1, at 160 (The [executive and judicial Officers . . .
of the United States language within the Oaths and Affirmations] Clause is clearly referring
to the President . . . . (emphasis added)). And the same ambiguity of language appears in
ancient legal systems too. Compare Deuteronomy 16:18 (The Jerusalem Bible 232) (Harold
Fisch ed., 1989) (translating Deuteronomy 16:18 as: Judges and officers shalt thou make thee
in all thy gates . . . . (emphasis added)), and Deuteronomy 16:18 (The New Oxford
Annotated Bible 236) (Herbert G. May & Bruce M. Metzger, eds., rev. std. vers. 1973)
(translating Deuteronomy 16:18 as: You shall appoint judges and officers in all your
towns . . . . (emphasis and bold added)), with 5 R. ABRAHAM BEN ISAIAH & R. BENJAMIN
SHARFMAN, THE PENTATEUTCH AND RASHIS COMMENTARY: A LINEAR TRANSLATION INTO
ENGLISH 157 (1977) (recording Rashis commentary explaining Deuteronomy 16:18 as:
[J]udges who decide the law; and officers are those who govern the people after their
command (i.e., of the judges) . . . .); compare 1 TRACTATE SANHEDRIN 2a3 (Rabbi Hersh
Goldwin et al. eds., 1993) (The original Great Sanhedrin was composed of seventy Elders
with Moses over them. This totals seventy-one judges. RYehudah says: The Great Sanhedrin
was composed of seventy judges. (emphasis added) (emphasis and Hebrew omitted)
(footnote omitted)), with id. at 16b4 (The dispute is based on the question of whether Moses
was a member of the original Great Sanhedrin together with the seventy Elders.), and id. at
16b4 n.36 (noting that [p]erhaps Moses was not an actual member of the court, and merely
presided over them . . . . (emphasis in the original) (citing Yad Ramah, and Chamra
VeChayei)). I am not suggesting that any Framers believed this material, but only that it was a
literary tradition that they would have comprehended. See, e.g., AMAR, supra note 9, at 572
n.21 (noting that the eighteenth-century world [was] sensitive to fine gradations of formal
title); cf. CONFUCIUS, THE ANALECTS (circa 500 B.C.E.), available at
http://classics.mit.edu/Confucius/analects.4.4.html (Confucius said, When good government
prevails in the empire, ceremonies, music, and punitive military expeditions proceed from the
[Emperor]. When bad government prevails in the empire, ceremonies, music, and punitive
military expeditions proceed from the princes. When these things proceed from the princes,
as a rule, the cases will be few in which they do not lose their power in ten generations. When
they proceed from the great officers of the princes, as a rule, the case will be few in which
they do not lose their power in five generations. When the subsidiary ministers of the great
officers hold in their grasp the orders of the state, as a rule the cases will be few in which they
do not lose their power in three generations.).
96
U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 3.
97
There is some scholarship discussing the Article VI Religious Test Clause, but no
substantial discussion, Professor Destro and Mr. Kesavan excepted, discussing the scope of
the clauses public trust language. See Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 489 n.1 (1961)
(Black, J.) (applying the First and Fourteenth Amendment, and finding it unnecessary to
consider [the] contention that [the Religious Test Clause] applies to state as well as federal
offices); Newdow v. Eagen, 309 F. Supp. 2d 29, 37-38 & n.5 (D.D.C.) (Kennedy, J.)
(discussing standing requirements to assert a claim under the Religious Test Clause), appeal
dismissed, No. 04-5195, 2004 WL 1701043 (D.C. Cir. July 29, 2004) (per curiam); Idaho v.
Freeman, 507 F. Supp. 706, 729 (D. Idaho 1981) (Callister, J.) (This [A]rticle VI religious
test clause has received little, if any, attention from the courts . . . . (citing Torcaso, supra));
MORTON BORDEN, JEWS, TURKS, AND INFIDELS 44 (1984); Gerard V. Bradley, The No
2013]
349
Religious Test Clause and the Constitution of Religious Liberty: A Machine That Has Gone of
Itself, 37 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 674, 718-20 (1987); Daniel L. Dreisbach, The Constitutions
Forgotten Religion Clause: Reflections on the Article VI Religious Test Ban, 38 J. OF CHURCH
& STATE 261 (1996); Note, An Originalist Analysis of the Religious Test Clause, 120 HARV.
L. REV. 1649 (2007); cf. Francis J. Beckwith, The Court of Disbelief: The Constitutions
Article VI Religious Test Prohibition and the Judiciarys Religious Motive Analysis, 33
HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 337 (2006); Winston E. Calvert, Judicial Selection and the Religious
Test Clause, 82 WASH. U. L.Q. 1129 (2004); Paul Horwitz, Religious Tests in the Mirror: The
Constitutional Law and Constitutional Etiquette of Religion in Judicial Nominations, 15 WM.
& MARY BILL RTS. J. 75 (2006); Bryan H. Wildenthal, Nationalizing the Bill of Rights:
Scholarship and Commentary on the Fourteenth Amendment in 1867-1873, 18 J. CONTEMP.
LEGAL ISSUES 153, 190 n.117, 236 n.257 (2009) (discussing scholarship opining on whether
the Religious Test Clause was incorporated against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment).
Compare Silverman v. Campbell, 486 S.E.2d 1, 2 (S.C. 1997) (Finney, C.J.) (affirming
challenge under the Religious Test Clause to a state constitutional provision), and Bradley,
supra at 718 (explaining that the Supreme Courts opinion in Torcaso, if it is to be grasped at
all, affects an incorporation of [A]rticle VI . . . .), with Torcaso v. Watkins, 162 A.2d 438,
442 (Md. 1960) (Henderson, J.) (holding that the Religious Test Clause is plainly
inapplicable to the States), revd on other grounds, 367 U.S. 488 (1961).
A few authorities discuss the Religious Test Clauses public trust language in some detail.
See Memorandum for William P. Marshall, Deputy Counsel to the President, from Randolph
D. Moss, Asst. Atty Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Application of the Coreligionists
Exemption in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, at *22 n.46 (Oct. 12, 2000), available at
http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (click, in Related Files, MOSS_DOJ_
MEMORANDUM.pdf) (noting that [t]here is virtually no federal case law discussing what
constitutes a public trust for purposes of [A]rticle VIs religious test ban, and hypothesizing
that it extends either to Senators and Representatives and/or to any position or function the
performance of which is subject to a duty of loyalty to the United States (emphasis added));
Robert A. Destro, The Structure of the Religious Liberty Guarantee, 11 J.L. & RELIGION 355,
369 n.59 (1995) (arguing that public trust under the United States extends to elective
positions); Kesavan, supra note 48 passim (hypothesizing that public trust under the United
States extends to members of Congress and to federal electors). Notice how Assistant
Attorney General Moss makes use of a concept well-developed in private lawthe fiduciary
duty of loyaltyto understand a public law concept, i.e., the meaning of public trust under the
United States. See Geoffrey P. Miller, The Corporate Law Background of the Necessary and
Proper Clause, in THE ORIGINS OF THE NECESSARY AND PROPER CLAUSE 144 (Gary Lawson et
al. eds., 2010); Eric Enlow, The Corporate Conception of the State and the Origins of Limited
Constitutional Government, 6 WASH. U. J.L. & POLY 1 (2001); Robert G. Natelson, The
Constitution and the Public Trust, 52 BUFF. L. REV. 1077 (2004); see also Evan J. Criddle,
Fiduciary Foundations of Administrative Law, 54 UCLA L. REV. 117 (2006); Robert G.
Natelson, The Agency Law Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause, 55 CASE W. RES. L.
REV. 243 (2004); cf. Mary Sarah Bilder, The Corporate Origins of Judicial Review, 116 YALE
L.J. 502 (2006). Compare Prakash, supra note 45, at 144 (objecting to using evidence from
corporate law field in order to understand public law terms), with Prakash & Smith, supra
note 9, at 107 (using evidence from trust law in order to understand public law terminology).
See generally R. v Boston (1923) 33 CLR 386, 412 (Austl.) (Higgins, J.) (He is a member of
Parliament, holding a fiduciary relation towards the public, and that is enough.); Paul D.
Finn, The Forgotten Trust: The People and the State, in EQUITY: ISSUES AND TRENDS 131,
133 (Malcolm Cope ed., 1995) (noting that English judges brought public officials into a
fiduciary relationship with the public (citing R. v. Bembridge, (1783) 99 Eng. Rep. 679
(K.B.), 22 St. Tr. 1)); Robert French, Chief Justice of the High Court of Austl., Seventh
Annual St. Thomas More Forum Lecture: Public Office and Public Trust (Canberra June 22,
350
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every article, section, clause, and word of the Constitution has been examined in
detail, the absence of commentary on the scope of the public trust language in the
Religious Test Clause is surprising. This is particularly true in light of our societys
deep fascination with church-state issues and the First Amendment. Some authors
simply punt in regard to the scope of the public trust language.98 The majority view
posits that the public trust language extends to Members of Congress.99 Recently,
Vasan Kesavan suggested that it extends to Members of Congress and to federal
electors.100 Either one of these interpretations poses an existential threat to those in
the academic consensus with regard to the Constitutions language related to office
and officer. If the Amars, Chafetz, and Kesavan are correctif officers of the
United States is coextensive with officers under the United States and the President
and Vice President are embraced by these two categories which (according to the
consensus) extend only to executive and judicial officersthen no language in the
Constitution extends the force of the Religious Test Clause to non-member nonpresiding congressional officers, e.g., the Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the
Senate, etc. That is a startling and deeply counter-intuitive result. One wonders if
Professor Chafetz, Professor Akhil Amar, Professor Vikram Amar, or any of the
other promoters of the academic consensus will own up to the difficulty in their
position. Should not those in the consensus come forward with some theory as to the
scope of the Religious Test Clauses public trust language? Is not this a minimal
requirement for any structuralist or intratextual account of the Constitutions
meaning as a whole?101
2011), available at http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/currentjustices/
frenchcj/frenchcj22jun11.pdf.
98
See AMAR, supra note 9, at 301 (As a further gesture of religious inclusiveness and
tolerance, Article VI forbade any religious Test for any federal office or post . . . .
(emphasis added)). What is an office? What is a post? See also GOLD, supra note 9, at 163
(using the phrase offices of public trust under the United Statesa phrase nowhere
appearing in the Constitution); HUGH HEWITT, A MORMON IN THE WHITEHOUSE 237 (2007)
(Because the First Amendments breadth is as wide as all government activity, questions
about the precise meaning of office of public trust [Tillman addinga phrase nowhere
appearing in the Constitution] are also moot. Whether the Religious Test Clause by itself
extends to members of Congress or all the way down to postal workers no longer matters
save perhaps to historians.); cf. AMAR, supra note 14, at 74 (interpreting the Religious Test
Clause to mean that no federal public servant may ever be forced to pass a religious test).
99
Cf. U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 903 (1995) (Thomas, J., dissenting)
(But the only reason for extending the [Religious Test] Clause to the States would be to
protect Senators and Representatives from state-imposed religious qualifications; I know of no
one else who holds a public Trust under the United States yet who might be subject to state
disqualifications.).
100
101
Kesavan, supra note 48 passim.
See Amar & Amar, supra note 9, at 136 n.143 (The Constitution must mean
somethingthe best reading of the document either permits or bars legislative succession.).
To which I would add: The Constitution must mean somethingthe best reading of the
Constitution (prior to passage of the First Amendment) either permitted imposition of
religious tests on non-member non-presiding legislative officers or it did not. See generally
Akhil Reed Amar, Intratextualism, 112 HARV. L. REV. 747, 761 (1999) ([T]he same (or very
similar) words in the same document should, at least presumptively, be construed in the same
(or a very similar) way. But the flip side of the intratextual coin is that when two (or more)
2013]
351
By contrast, the position I put forward here clears up this difficulty. Office . . .
under the United States embraces statutory and appointed officers (including nonmember non-presiding legislative officers such as the Clerk and Secretary); public
trust under the United States embraces elected or constitutionally mandated
positions.102 Thus, the language of the Religious Test Clause covers, just as one
might suspect, all positions expressly created by the Constitution and all offices that
were to be created in the future, i.e., post-1789, under delegated or statutory
authority.103
clauses feature different wording, this difference may also be a clue to meaning, and invite
different construction of the different words. (emphasis added)).
102
Compare Motions Sys. Corp. v. Bush, 437 F.3d 1356, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2006)
(Gajarsa, J., concurring in part and concurring in the en banc judgment) ([T]he President of
the United States [is] a constitutional official who is plainly not an officer of the United
States for Appointments Clause purposes but whose office is [instead] created by the
Constitution itself. (emphasis added) (emphasis in the original omitted)), KALT, supra
note 14, at 89 n.16 ([A] good case [can be made] that officers under the authority of the
United States in the Emoluments Clause are not the same set as officers under or of the
United States, and that people should be careful about treating these different phrasings as
though they are necessarily identical. (emphasis added)), and PETER K. ROFES, THE RELIGION
GUARANTEES: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION 12 (2005) (noting
that the Religious Test Clause originally extended to any office or public trust under the
Authority of the United States, but the Authority of-language was dropped by the
Committee of Style), with David J. Shaw, Note, An Officer and a Congressman: The
Unconstitutionality of Congressmen in the Armed Forces Reserves, 97 GEO. L.J. 1739, 1743 &
nn.19, 20 (2009) (arguing that one may infer from the Constitutions text that the presidency is
an office of the United States, and that the differences between office and office of the
United States and office under the United States and other such similar office-related
categories are minor textual differences without any meaningful distinction[]), and Schatz,
supra note 13, at 146 (The Constitutions usage regarding public officials is inconsistent and
reflects no evident intent to establish terms of art in this regard. (footnote omitted)). See
generally Alexander B. Haskell, Deference, Defiance, and the Language of Office in
Seventeenth-Century Virginia, in EARLY MODERN VIRGINIA: RECONSIDERING THE OLD
DOMINION 161 (Douglas Bradburn & John C. Coombs eds., 2011) ([Professor Conal]
Condren has argued that, in England, the language of office was just that, a vocabulary for
moral discourse rather than a particular ideology or even a singular concept. Particular shared
presuppositions arose from the vocabulary, making it far more than simply random talk;
indeed, because it was almost universally accepted the language effectively gave rise to the
world of offices that it described. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)); Karen Orren,
Officers Rights: Towards a Unified Field Theory of American Constitutional Development,
34 LAW & SOCY REV. 873 (2000); Karen Orren, The Work of Government: Recovering the
Discourse of Office in Marbury v. Madison, 8 STUD. AM. POL. DEV. 60 (1994).
103
See Destro, supra note 97, at 369 n.59 (There are only a few sources which shed light
on the content of the phrase any Office or public Trust under the United States. The first
partoffice under the United Statesis relatively clear given the language of Article I, 6
(Incompatibility Clause) and Art. II, 1, 2. It is arguable, though not by any means settled,
that all persons who hold elective offices, federal appointments, or who perform a federal
function of any sort, including members of the Armed Services and presidential Electors, are
protected by the Test Clause. . . . The more interesting question is what constitutes a public
Trust under the United States. (emphasis added)); supra note 64 (quoting the Incompatibility
Clause); see also supra note 97 (collecting authority other than Destro). See generally
MICHAEL S. ARIENS & ROBERT A. DESTRO, RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY 71112 (2d ed. 2002) (suggesting that the Religious Test Clauses public trust language is
352
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VI. AFTERWARD
There is, or at least was, an apocryphal story told at the University of Chicago. It
went something like this: In the time before time, Aaron Director invited Ronald
Coase to present a paper at the Law & Economics Colloquium. Coase presented a
paper titled The Problem of Social Cost.104 After presenting his paper to a room full
of luminaries, he asked for a vote to get the sense of the audience. Not one person
bought into his new view, and, all who voted, voted against it. He recast his
argument. The vote was the same. He did it a third timeand low and behold, one
vote broke from the pack, but all others still stood opposed. He presented it again,
and some three persons supported the new view. By the end of the evening, he had
brought around the largest part of the audience. In years past, I heard this story from
both Milton Friedman and George Stigler, o.b.m. The only difference in the telling
broader than the Clauses officer language and may extend to federal contractors, grantees
of federal funds, and holders of broadcast license[s]); JOHN LOUIS LACAITES, FLEXIBILITY
AND CONSTITUENCY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ANGLO-WHIGGISM: A CASE STUDY OF THE
RHETORICAL DIMENSIONS OF LEGITIMACY (1984). Professor Destro suggests as one
possibility, among others, that non-member non-presiding legislative staff might hold a public
trust under the United States. Destro, supra note 97, at 366 n.45. He suggests that their close
identification with the individual [member] who employs them makes them administrators of
the public Trust held by that individual. Id. By contrast, I think the more linguistically
true reading is that officers work for trustees. See, e.g., Letter from George Washington to
Elonor Franois lie, Comte de Moustier (May 25, 1789), supra note 95, at 334 (The
impossibility that one man should be able to perform all the great business of State, I take to
have been the reason for instituting the great Departments, and appointing officers therein, to
assist the supreme Magistrate in discharging the duties of his trust. (emphasis added)); 9
STATE OF NEW YORK: MESSAGES FROM THE GOVERNORS, supra note 95, at 515 (reproducing
May 23, 1894 veto message of Governor Roswell P. Flower, which stated: That one who
holds the power to appoint a public officer, to remove him at will and appoint his successor, to
fix his salary and to change it from time to time, holds a public trust will not be
disputed . . . .placing the officers below the holders of public trusts (emphasis added));
Victoria F. Nourse, Laws Constitution: A Relational Critique, 17 WIS. WOMENS L.J. 23
(2002) ([A]ny real life relation will doit need not be the relation between men and women
or women and children, it need not be a sexual or an intimate relation, but may be the relation
between contracting parties, between the members of a board of directors and the companys
officers, or between voters and their public agents. (emphasis added)); Eric Lichtblau,
Conflict of Interest is Raised in Eavesdropping Ruling, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 23, 2006, at A19
(The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bushs eavesdropping program was
unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given . . . to the American Civil
Liberties Union . . . .).
Professor Akhil Amar agrees that the Religious Test Clause covers the gamut or all federal
positions. See AMAR, supra note 14, at 74 (interpreting the Religious Test Clause to mean that
no federal public servant may ever be forced to pass a religious test). But, it is difficult to
see how his conclusion in regard to the Religious Test Clause squares with his other
publications touching on the meaning of office and officer. Further clarity on this point will
have to come from Professor Amar.
104
See R.H. Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, 3 J.L. & ECON. 1 (1960); see also R.H.
Coase, The Federal Communications Commission, 2 J.L. & ECON. 1 (1959).
2013]
353
was that when Friedman told it, he was the first to agree with Coase, and when
Stigler told it . . . well you get the idea.105
I believe that there are already some signs in the literature that the modern
consensus is falling.106 The Executive Branch has, on occasion, broken from that
105
This passage is my personal recollection of the story as I heard it some years ago. I
have no source for it. Cf. Edmund W. Kitch, The Fire of Truth: A Remembrance of Law and
Economics at Chicago, 1932-1970, 26 J.L. & ECON. 163, 220-21 (1983) (recounting what
appears to be basically the same tale); id. at 233 (A striking aspect of the whole discussion
[and conference which gave awards to Coase and Director] is the repeated emphasis on the
importance of oral communication.).
106
See, e.g., supra note 64 (quoting the text of the Incompatibility Clause and Ineligibility
Clause); Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3155
(2010) (Roberts, C.J.) (The diffusion of power carries with it a diffusion of accountability.
The people do not vote for the Officers of the United States. Art. II, 2, cl. 2. They instead
look to the President [Tillman addingwho is elected] to guide the assistants or deputies . . .
subject to his superintendence. The Federalist No. 72, p.487 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (A.
Hamilton). . . . That is why the Framers sought to ensure that those who are employed in the
execution of the law will be in their proper situation, and the chain of dependence be
preserved; the lowest officers, the middle grade [officers], and the highest [officers], will
depend, as they ought, on the President, and the President on the community. 1 Annals of
Cong., at 499 (J. Madison). (emphasis added)); Freytag v. Commr, 501 U.S. 868, 904 (1991)
(Scalia, J., concurring) (The Framers experience with postrevolutionary self-government
had taught them that combining the power to create offices with the power to appoint [Tillman
addingnot elect] officers was a recipe for legislative corruption. The foremost danger was
that legislators would create offices with the expectancy of occupying them themselves. This
was guarded against by the Incompatibility and Ineligibility Clauses, Article I, 6, cl. 2.);
KALT, supra note 14, at 89 n.16 ([A] good case [can be made] that officers under the
authority of the United States in the Emoluments Clause are not the same set as officers
under or of the United States, and that people should be careful about treating these
different phrasings as though they are necessarily identical. (emphasis added)); Richard
Albert, The Constitutional Politics of Presidential Succession, 39 HOFSTRA L. REV. 497, 508
(2011) (But with respect to the founding era, the evidence from the first succession act
indicates the contrary: joint interbranch service [between Congress and the Presidency] may
well have been constitutional. (emphasis added)); Steven G. Calabresi, Closing Statement, A
Term of Art or the Artful Reading of Terms?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 156
(recognizing the possibility that officer under the United States may be potentially broader
than officer of the United States, although arguing that the President is in the former category,
even if not in the latter); Calabresi & Yoo, supra note 95, at 1496 n.163 (The Incompatibility
Clause was added to the Constitution to prevent the President from inducing Members of
Congress to vote for his legislative program by offering to appoint them to high executive and
judicial offices. (emphasis added)); Feerick, supra note 77, at 62 (I am not entirely
convinced that it is unconstitutional to place legislators in the line of presidential
succession . . . .); James Fleming, Presidential Succession: The Art of the Possible, 79
FORDHAM L. REV. 951, 954 (2010) (I see no constitutional infirmity in legislative
succession. . . . [T]he better originalist arguments are in favor of the constitutionality of
legislative succession.); Goldstein, Akhil Reed Amar and Presidential Continuity, supra
note 81, at 83-95 (collecting authority and argument distinguishing officer from officer of
the United States); Michael B. Rappaport, The Selective Nondelegation Doctrine and the
Line Item Veto, 76 TULANE L. REV. 265, 331 (2001) (noting that the Framers prohibited
members of Congress from also serving as U.S. officers and assigned to Congress the power
to establish such officeswhich would seem to exclude the President and Vice President
(emphasis added) (footnote omitted) (citing the Incompatibility Clause)); Hanah Metchis
Volokh, The Two Appointments Clauses: Statutory Qualifications for Federal Officers, 10 U.
354
[Vol. 61:285
PA. J. CONST. L. 745, 779 (2008) (The Incompatibility Clause sets a limit both on
membership in Congress and on holding an appointed [Tillman addingnot elected] office
namely, that the same person cannot do both at the same time. (emphasis added)); Howard
M. Wasserman, The Trouble with Shadow Government, 52 EMORY L.J. 281, 289 (2003) (The
counterargument is that the unmodified term Officers [as used in the Succession Clause] is
broader than Officers of the United States and also may include legislative officers, such as
the Speaker and President Pro Tempore. (citing Manning, supra note 45, at 143-44 (arguing
that the failure to use in the Succession Clause the otherwise frequently-used phrase Officers
of the United States suggests that the use of Officer, standing alone and unmodified, in the
Succession Clause, refers to a broader class of actors than does Officers of the United
States))); Adam J. White, Will the Real VP Please Step Forward?, LEGAL TIMES, Oct. 27,
2008, at 36, 37 (But ultimately, Article I, Section 3s internal tension is a red herring. No
matter which constitutional branch the vice president is inor whether he is in both
branches or neither branchhis offices constitutional powers are exclusively legislative.);
Steven G. Calabresi, Abstract to Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the President?,
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK (Nov. 4, 2008), http://papers.ssrn.com/
abstract=1294671 (describing office under the United States as an arguably murky term);
Richard Heald, Separation of Powers (or is it?), CONSTI WEBLOG: WHATS HOT AND WHATS
NOT (Jan. 6, 2009, 5:23:11 AM), http://khei.etouch.net/cm/blog/rheald/posts/post_
1231248220160.html (taking the view that one could say that the text [of the Constitution]
doesnt require [a senator to resign before assuming the presidency] ([which seems allowable]
perhaps by oversight), but that a convention requires it). But cf. Memorandum to Hugh M.
Durham, Chief, Legislative & Legal Section, Office of Legislative Affairs, from Antonin
Scalia, Asst. Atty Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Proposed Bill to Increase the Salary of
the Attorney General, at *6 (Nov. 22, 1974), available at http://works.bepress.com/
seth_barrett_tillman/164/ (denominating the Ineligibility Clause as essential[ly]
incohesiv[e]). However, in a recent student note, Mr. David Shaw restated and reaffirmed
the modern academic consensus view: that although the Constitution uses a variety of terms
relating to office and officer, the different terminology is without meaningful
distinction. Shaw, supra note 102, at 1743 n.20. The lone eighteenth century source Shaw
puts forward in support of his position is debate from the North Carolina ratifying convention
purporting to illustrate that office of Authority under was used interchangeably with other
variantsbut neither Shaws office of Authority under (a phrase nowhere appearing in the
Constitution) nor the phrase Office under the Authority of the United States (apparently the
phrase Shaw intended) appears anywhere in the debate cited by Shaw. Id. at 1746 n.47 (citing
three days debate in the North Carolina ratifying convention, a convention which failed to
ratify the Constitution). One is (again) left wondering upon what facts the modern consensus
is based. See supra note 64.
Likewise, in a recent book, Professor Jay Wexler uses carefully chosen language leaving it
unclear whether he believes the (elected) President and/or Vice President are officers of the
United States. See JAY WEXLER, THE ODD CLAUSES: UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTITUTION
THROUGH TEN OF ITS MOST CURIOUS PROVISIONS 43-44 (2011) (What the Constitution is
saying here [in the Appointments Clause] . . . is that the US government has two kinds of
officers when it comes to appointments: principal officers . . . and inferior officers . . . .
(emphasis added) (commas omitted)). In other words, Wexler leaves unclear if there are
other federal actors properly denominated officers of the United States who are not subject to
appointment, (i.e., elected positions). Cf. id. at 8-9, 52-54, 221 (discussing Tillmans
publications). Wexlers unwillingness to directly address this obscure point may very well
reflect the fact that he believes the question is an open one, i.e., one which reasonable minds
have and may continue to disagree about. His open-mindedness is a view not universally
shared. See Steven G. Calabresi, Rebuttal, Does the Incompatibility Clause Apply to the
President?, in Tillman & Calabresi, supra note 10, at 141 (responding, to the position that
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consensus.107 I believe that when that time comes, the view I put forward in 2007, or
something like it, will become the new view. When that time comes, I sincerely
joint presidential-senate office-holding is constitutional, by opining that such a view is utterly
implausible).
107
See Application of the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause of the Constitution and the
Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, 6 Op. Off. Legal Counsel 156, 157, 1982 WL 170682,
at *2, 1982 OLC LEXIS 46, at *4-5 (Feb. 24, 1982) (Shanks, Depy Asst. Atty Gen.)
(affirming that different language relating to office in different constitutional clauses relates
to different purpose[s]); see also Authority of Foreign Law Enforcement Agents to Carry
Weapons in the United States, 12 Op. Off. Legal Counsel 67, 68, 1988 WL 391002, at *2,
1988 OLC LEXIS 41, at *5 (Apr. 12, 1988) (McGinnis, Depy Asst. Atty Gen.) (The
[Foreign] Emoluments Clause must be read broadly in order to fulfill that purpose.
Accordingly, the Clause applies to all persons holding an office of profit or trust under the
United States, and not merely to that smaller group of persons who are deemed to be officers
of the United States for purposes of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. (emphasis
added) (citing 1986 Opinion, infra)); Application of the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause to PartTime Consultant for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 10 Op. Off. Legal Counsel 96, 98,
1986 WL 213241, at *2, 1986 OLC LEXIS 66, at *5 (June 3, 1986) (Cooper, Asst. Atty
Gen.) (Prior opinions of this Office have assumed without discussion that the persons
covered by the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause were officers of the United States in the sense
used in the Appointments Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, 2, cl. 2. Nevertheless, in [the] 1982
[Opinion, supra], we did advise that a person may hold an office of profit or trust under the
[Foreign] Emoluments Clause without necessarily being an officer of the United States for
purposes of the Appointments Clause. (footnote omitted)); cf. Brief for Petitioners,
Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208 (1974) (No. 72-1188), 1973
WL 173884, at *52 (Various statutes impose limitations and prohibitions upon officers of the
United States. Because there is a close relationship between such officers and offices under
the United Statesin most, and perhaps all instances, the concepts are co-extensivethe
cases defining officer of the United States are relevant in determining what constitutes an
office under the United States. (emphasis added)) (filed by Solicitor General Robert H.
Bork et al.); cf. SILVA, supra note 10, at 149 (Officers of the United States are not
appointed by electoral colleges. They are appointed by the President and Senate, by the
President alone, by the department heads, or by the courts of law.); Silva, supra note 9,
at 475 ([T]he only election by presidential electors known in the Constitution is the election
of the President and Vice President. Officers of the United States are appointed by the
President and the Senate, by the President alone, by the department heads, or by the courts.
(emphasis added)). In its most recent opinions touching on the subject, the Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC) has impliedly rejected the position put forward in the Cooper, McGinnis, and
Shanks opinions. See Applicability of the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause and the Foreign Gifts
and Decorations Act to the Presidents Receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, 33 Op. Off. Legal
Counsel (slip op. at 4), 2009 WL 6365082, at *4, 2009 OLC LEXIS 18, at *10 (Dec. 7, 2009)
(Barron, Acting Asst. Atty Gen.) (announcing in ipse dixit that [t]he President surely
hold[s] an[] Office of Profit or Trust[] [under the United States] . . . . (emphasis added)
(quoting Article I, Section 9, Clause 8)); cf. Applicability of the [Foreign] Emoluments Clause
to Nongovernmental Members of ACUs, 34 Op. Off. Legal Counsel (slip op. at 4), 2010 WL
2516024, at *4, 2010 OLC LEXIS 2, at *12-13 (June 3, 2010) (Barron, Acting Asst. Atty
Gen.) (Our [2005] Bioethics Council and [our 2007] FBI Advisory Board opinions go further
than our [1996] IEP opinion and indicate that only those persons considered officers within
the meaning of the Appointments Clause . . . may be subject to the [Foreign] Emoluments
Clause . . . .). Puzzlingly, however, the Barron opinions neither distinguish nor cite to the
counter-authority in the earlier OLC opinions. See generally Trevor W. Morrison, Stare
Decisis in the Office of Legal Counsel, 110 COLUM. L. REV. 1448, 1448 (2010) (The data
show that OLC rarely openly departs from its prior opinions, but that an express request for
356
[Vol. 61:285
hope that Professor Chafetz can play the role of Stigler or Friedman, rather than that
of the many others (good people no doubt) who waited in the wings.
overruling from the executive entity most affected by the opinion is a good predictor of such a
departure.).

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INTERPRETING PRECISE CONSTITUTIONAL

TEXT: THE ARGUMENT FOR A NEW

I. THE METAPHOR IS THE MESSAGE ........................................ 286

Lecturer of Law, National University of Ireland Maynooth; Adjunct Professor, Rutgers

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Cf. MARSHALL MCLUHAN, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN 7 (1964)

Chafetz, supra note 1, at 351.

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In analyzing impeachment, there are four constitutional provisions that are of

U.S. CONST. art. I, 2, cl. 5.

U.S. CONST. art. I, 3, cl. 6.

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having been private.); Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, If the Judicial Confirmation Process is

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A. Must Senate Conviction Upon Impeachment Effectuate Removal (Chafetzs

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See, e.g., Chafetz, supra note 1, at 352.

See id. at 353-67.

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See id. at 422 (noting anti-entrenchment rationale for impeachment).

See id. at 353 (tying assassination to the aggrandizement rationale).

Even if in office, it seems to me that an impeached and convicted office-holder must be

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an office created by statute can be terminated by Congress via statute, which,

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Thus, outside of the impeachment context, removal can be effectuated by action

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Professor Chafetz might argue my position is too cramped: conviction and

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Chafetz, supra note 1, at 421 (capitalization added).

Id. at 351 n.23.

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election procedures to such offices40 (although Congress has an express power to

See supra note 40 (quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, 4, cl. 1).

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suggested that the validity of my position depends on whether I could produce

See Prakash, supra note 45, at 147.

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This statute works a statutory disqualification: any judicial officer convicted of

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U.S. CONST. art. II, 2, cl. 2.

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oversight would simply reduce interpretevism to a series of unfalsifiable

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